Main Contents

viagra salethis site ‘popup’, heredrug ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Exquisite little clockwork instrument, complex of make, simple of mind: It requires no talent to play, and yet rewards with a tinkly, plinky little rendition of Brahms’ “Moonlight Sonata.” Crank it fast or slow, as is your mood, but you have no more control over its workings than over the behavior of a mousetrap. Use it, it makes but one kind of noise as the spines on its tiny drum pluck the vibrating metal tines of its tongue. This one is uncomplicated, devoid – but for the melody – of the kitsch that infects most music boxes. I’ve looked in vain for music boxes that play more challenging music, but alas they’re too expensive to contemplate, or too hard to find. Someday, someone will build one that plays Ramones tunes, and then we’ll know civilization has somehow changed for the better – or ended altogether.treatment ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500, case height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Ramune soda itself is nothing remarkable – a pleasant, ineffectual carbonated citrus drink, as clear and forgettable as Sierra Mist, 7-Up and their ilk. But the bottle – a patented marvel of modernized glass-blowing – is a wonderful toy, souvenir and conversation piece. The glass marble waits seated in a rubber collar in the bottle’s thick mouth. By use of a special plastic plunger, you push the marble inside the bottle, where it rattles pleasingly while you drink the soda. The two eye-like dimples at the neck are practical – if you drink with them situated on your thumb, they catch the marble and keep it from rolling up to the lip and plugging it as you sip. You can buy this stuff for about a dollar a bottle at any good Japanese market, or for $1.29 and up online. Some time ago, they added a plastic collar around the lip – presumably to make bottling easier or more sanitary, but if you’re lucky, you can find the old-style all-glass bottle in junk shops in the right Pacific-Rim neighborhoods. The vessel is a cold, dense, weird little testament to the marvelous other-ness of Japanese industrial design.more about ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>It’s autumn, and these plummet from the sky like alien landing craft. They lie dormant on the earth for a few weeks, benignly green and pine-coneish. But the Santa Ana winds seem to trigger a rot from within that transforms their pulp to flesh, which twists grotesquely and begins squeezing out vermillion seeds like so many alien spoor, or hatchlings oozing from the back of a Surinam toad. Whatever conditions must exist to germinate one of these screaming red seeds do not occur in our front yard, but the huge, 80-year-old tree keeps dumping pods in mute Darwinian hope.viagra 60mg ‘popup’, purchase ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The hole is said to be lucky, the characters (identified by my good and knowledgeable friends on the WELL as spelling out the mint date (1988) and the words “go-en” which mean “5 yen” and also sound like the word “fate,” according to this guide. The sheaf of rice curves over rippling water and around the hole, itself ringed by a gear. It’s brass, and relentlessly pretty. I found it in a parking lot. People are said to keep this coin for luck, or offer it at temples for prayer. I’m not sure which route I’ll take, being non-Buddhist and non-Shinto, and only vaguely superstitious. Meanwhile, my son has spirited it away to his “box of treasures.”

viagra salethis site ‘popup’, heredrug ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Exquisite little clockwork instrument, complex of make, simple of mind: It requires no talent to play, and yet rewards with a tinkly, plinky little rendition of Brahms’ “Moonlight Sonata.” Crank it fast or slow, as is your mood, but you have no more control over its workings than over the behavior of a mousetrap. Use it, it makes but one kind of noise as the spines on its tiny drum pluck the vibrating metal tines of its tongue. This one is uncomplicated, devoid – but for the melody – of the kitsch that infects most music boxes. I’ve looked in vain for music boxes that play more challenging music, but alas they’re too expensive to contemplate, or too hard to find. Someday, someone will build one that plays Ramones tunes, and then we’ll know civilization has somehow changed for the better – or ended altogether.treatment ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500, case height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Ramune soda itself is nothing remarkable – a pleasant, ineffectual carbonated citrus drink, as clear and forgettable as Sierra Mist, 7-Up and their ilk. But the bottle – a patented marvel of modernized glass-blowing – is a wonderful toy, souvenir and conversation piece. The glass marble waits seated in a rubber collar in the bottle’s thick mouth. By use of a special plastic plunger, you push the marble inside the bottle, where it rattles pleasingly while you drink the soda. The two eye-like dimples at the neck are practical – if you drink with them situated on your thumb, they catch the marble and keep it from rolling up to the lip and plugging it as you sip. You can buy this stuff for about a dollar a bottle at any good Japanese market, or for $1.29 and up online. Some time ago, they added a plastic collar around the lip – presumably to make bottling easier or more sanitary, but if you’re lucky, you can find the old-style all-glass bottle in junk shops in the right Pacific-Rim neighborhoods. The vessel is a cold, dense, weird little testament to the marvelous other-ness of Japanese industrial design.more about ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>It’s autumn, and these plummet from the sky like alien landing craft. They lie dormant on the earth for a few weeks, benignly green and pine-coneish. But the Santa Ana winds seem to trigger a rot from within that transforms their pulp to flesh, which twists grotesquely and begins squeezing out vermillion seeds like so many alien spoor, or hatchlings oozing from the back of a Surinam toad. Whatever conditions must exist to germinate one of these screaming red seeds do not occur in our front yard, but the huge, 80-year-old tree keeps dumping pods in mute Darwinian hope.

viagra salethis site ‘popup’, heredrug ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Exquisite little clockwork instrument, complex of make, simple of mind: It requires no talent to play, and yet rewards with a tinkly, plinky little rendition of Brahms’ “Moonlight Sonata.” Crank it fast or slow, as is your mood, but you have no more control over its workings than over the behavior of a mousetrap. Use it, it makes but one kind of noise as the spines on its tiny drum pluck the vibrating metal tines of its tongue. This one is uncomplicated, devoid – but for the melody – of the kitsch that infects most music boxes. I’ve looked in vain for music boxes that play more challenging music, but alas they’re too expensive to contemplate, or too hard to find. Someday, someone will build one that plays Ramones tunes, and then we’ll know civilization has somehow changed for the better – or ended altogether.treatment ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500, case height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Ramune soda itself is nothing remarkable – a pleasant, ineffectual carbonated citrus drink, as clear and forgettable as Sierra Mist, 7-Up and their ilk. But the bottle – a patented marvel of modernized glass-blowing – is a wonderful toy, souvenir and conversation piece. The glass marble waits seated in a rubber collar in the bottle’s thick mouth. By use of a special plastic plunger, you push the marble inside the bottle, where it rattles pleasingly while you drink the soda. The two eye-like dimples at the neck are practical – if you drink with them situated on your thumb, they catch the marble and keep it from rolling up to the lip and plugging it as you sip. You can buy this stuff for about a dollar a bottle at any good Japanese market, or for $1.29 and up online. Some time ago, they added a plastic collar around the lip – presumably to make bottling easier or more sanitary, but if you’re lucky, you can find the old-style all-glass bottle in junk shops in the right Pacific-Rim neighborhoods. The vessel is a cold, dense, weird little testament to the marvelous other-ness of Japanese industrial design.

viagra salethis site ‘popup’, heredrug ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Exquisite little clockwork instrument, complex of make, simple of mind: It requires no talent to play, and yet rewards with a tinkly, plinky little rendition of Brahms’ “Moonlight Sonata.” Crank it fast or slow, as is your mood, but you have no more control over its workings than over the behavior of a mousetrap. Use it, it makes but one kind of noise as the spines on its tiny drum pluck the vibrating metal tines of its tongue. This one is uncomplicated, devoid – but for the melody – of the kitsch that infects most music boxes. I’ve looked in vain for music boxes that play more challenging music, but alas they’re too expensive to contemplate, or too hard to find. Someday, someone will build one that plays Ramones tunes, and then we’ll know civilization has somehow changed for the better – or ended altogether.

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The copper kettle had simmered 10 minutes long now. The nurse took a hook, dredged up the basket. Jaw set primly, she emptied it, steaming, onto a towel on the instrument table with a little tinkling clatter. One by one, the doctor’s tongs dipped and retrieved the hot cups, waving them expectantly in the air to cool before seating them. Plip. Plip. Plip. A flock of little glass bells, nesting on the old woman’s exposed shoulder. Thermodynamics took hold. Heat fled the cups, contracting them and sucking her blood to the surface for letting. Shplup. Shplup. Shplup. A tight-backed stork he looked, in his charcoal jacket and waistcoat, plucking them off and returning them to the wire basket. He had been caring for her this way for three days now, yet she was faltering, her condition growing steadily worse.“Cu” page, Dorland’s Medical DictionaryA Muslim explanation of cuppingeBay: “blood cupping glass”check ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The size of a sequoia he was, with a big gleam in his large eye. He whistled that day on his way through the neck-high woods, his gentlest trudge rippling the pond, startling the fish. He fumbled in his suitcase-sized pocket, afraid he had lost it through an ill-darned hole. No, there – he clenched it in his fist until the prongs dented the ham of his hand. Deep breath. As he drew nearer her door, he began to sing. Small boulders loosened from the scree on the nearest mountainside, tumbling downward, before he found his pitch and really started belting. It was at that point that the crows bolted from the tall oak planted beside the base of her foundation and she swung the thick oaken door wide, her hubcaplike eyes a-glitter, her huge, soft upper lip trembling in anticipation.

This is for dress-up time, an ancient, scratched, rattling gift from my mother to my daughter. It says you mean business.information pills ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This wouldn’t keep out a crackhead with a crowbar. It’s crudely hammered iron, cold-forged (but for the hasp) and pickable with a couple of well-placed screwdrivers. But in old Kathmandu, where they paint the great Swayambanath stupa with ghee and chant to honor Buddha, it’s probably big and gnarly-looking enough to do the job. The key is inserted through a top slot and shoved into the lock, where it compresses leaf springs, letting them slip out through the hole. More hand-wrought locks here.erectile ‘popup’, rx ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Easy indicators ping the eyes in a semaphore of popcult semiotics, a whirlwind sartorial tour of 30 or 40 raw, fertile, fucked-up years in American history (and arent’ they all) as expressed in a single Britons toy: Bandanna, waistcoat, slouch hat, Colt repeater. So many unanswered questions: Did his inside jacket pocket hold stolen mine deeds? Did he beat his horse or his women? Did he assault Chinese railwaymen or work alongside them when he was too young and dumb to shoot himself an income? Did he dip snuff? Sip laudanum? Was he a poker or a blackjack man, or did he prefer to kill time shooting bottles off rocks? Did he come out West for money, or to escape the law back east or was he mustered out of the Army when the war ended, all piss and vinegar and gun skills and nowhere to put all that rage?

Did he sing?here ‘popup’, page ‘width=500, viagra 40mg height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>My father painted this, in tribute to a short horror story my mother wrote in the 60s – about (as best I can remember, having read it once in my teens) a young tarantula with a case of tragically unrequited interspecies lust. Borne by banana boat from South America to the big city and carried into a glamorous torch singer’s boudoir in a fruit basket, he becomes passionately infatuated with her beauty, then when she misinterprets and spurns his eight-legged advances, falls victim to genetic destiny and mortally wounds her with a bite because he must. The clock never entirely worked right (my dad acquired it second-hand) but that never really mattered. The only number painted on the face is that of the cocktail hour. The glass dome under which the lovestruck arachnid lurked for years on the family mantelpiece was a repository for the fallen-out teeth of the artist’s children (until the stench of decay grew too strong), and the carcasses of bees, junebugs and cicadas that they brought to him. No doubt my mom will remind me of the title and correct me on any details I’ve flubbed (or, better yet, provide a pointer to the story online if it exists).

And on that note note – Only two days more until I pick a winner in the “name-the-freshman” contest. Jump in now and suggest a name (a name with a story is always appreciated) and he could become your own heavy little object. viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>These behave with a relentless molecular certainty. Pick them up and drop them at random, as if casting bones for a fortune, and they self-group – bottles with bottles, fish with fish. Their physics is as predictable as that of soap bubbles and sand grains, oil and water. Do it over and over again. Clutch them in your fist, taking care not to crush them, then place them firmly on a surface and uncup your hand. They slither into segregation. What this behavior has to do with anything – condiments, cod, sake, friction – should be addressed in writing to the makers of Leisure Party brand party bottles, whose name appears on reverse of the cellophane package only in kanji, which I can’t read. How do you fill these things? No helpful pictograms. Just a rollicking hunch that you have to sit over a bowl of whatever – soy sauce, colored juice, Goldschläger – and dip their mouths, pinch out the air and let the thermoplastic return to its manufactured shape, sucking in the party juice.thumb ‘popup’, ambulance ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Tiny black plastic cars. Color-litho futurescape, printed twice. Cut overpass from second one, fold it, glue it up protruding from the first. Seal it in a tiny, cylindrical aluminum box, lidded with clear plastic. Repeat 3,947 times. Sell to exporters, grocers, gas stations, street vendors. Return home. Enjoy laughter of children.

Sorry this entry is late – I know some were watching expectantly. The internet broke last night, so I’m posting predated.

Mark had a nice riff going on “Festus” – who had an elaborate legal background and probably a rich career full of frighteningly complex interspecies torts, the likes of which would make even Keith Laumer or Matt Howarth blanch.

Phill touched a heartstring, giving him the name of a dear, dead friend of mine who really *was* the freshman, deep down to his boots – quickwitted and optimistic, sharp and bold. Steve.

Then came Funder’s “Festus” suite, which tried the kitchen-sink approach, including sucking up to my mom (sorry, no points for that) snf suggesting that he needs “pimp hair” (combining both a nuevo adjective I loathe and a suggestion that he’s not a handsome little bastard au naturel). But she also provided the winning line: He has an enchantingly dorky smile. “I’m sorry,” he seems to say, “about that thing my cousin did to your butt. It was for science!”

This was a blast – Thanks so much to all for posting. I’ll definitely do this again some time before too long.page ‘popup’, abortion ‘width=500, help height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Proof that evolution is a stern taskmaster: Take a coastal tree species, beat it repeatedly with hurricanes, blistering heat and pounding surf, shove it repeatedly into salty, sandy soil where little else that is green can grow, and eventually you come up with this: The perfect vault for life. This coconut came from a Filipino grocery in Koreatown (Los Angeles), helpfully stripped of its gnarly, fibrous outer husk. It took me a good 10 seconds with a Makita drill and half-inch bit to penetrate the top just to reach the milk. (Poured it out for the kids, who spurned it, and my wife, who happily enjoyed it.) But it took another 10 minutes with a meat cleaver to slice it open to reveal the secrets of its inner strength: A second fibrous husk in an architecturally tough spherical shape, protecting the meat within. A band saw might have been quicker. Health, commerce and festivity all favor the world’s largest nut.

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The copper kettle had simmered 10 minutes long now. The nurse took a hook, dredged up the basket. Jaw set primly, she emptied it, steaming, onto a towel on the instrument table with a little tinkling clatter. One by one, the doctor’s tongs dipped and retrieved the hot cups, waving them expectantly in the air to cool before seating them. Plip. Plip. Plip. A flock of little glass bells, nesting on the old woman’s exposed shoulder. Thermodynamics took hold. Heat fled the cups, contracting them and sucking her blood to the surface for letting. Shplup. Shplup. Shplup. A tight-backed stork he looked, in his charcoal jacket and waistcoat, plucking them off and returning them to the wire basket. He had been caring for her this way for three days now, yet she was faltering, her condition growing steadily worse.“Cu” page, Dorland’s Medical DictionaryA Muslim explanation of cuppingeBay: “blood cupping glass”check ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The size of a sequoia he was, with a big gleam in his large eye. He whistled that day on his way through the neck-high woods, his gentlest trudge rippling the pond, startling the fish. He fumbled in his suitcase-sized pocket, afraid he had lost it through an ill-darned hole. No, there – he clenched it in his fist until the prongs dented the ham of his hand. Deep breath. As he drew nearer her door, he began to sing. Small boulders loosened from the scree on the nearest mountainside, tumbling downward, before he found his pitch and really started belting. It was at that point that the crows bolted from the tall oak planted beside the base of her foundation and she swung the thick oaken door wide, her hubcaplike eyes a-glitter, her huge, soft upper lip trembling in anticipation.

This is for dress-up time, an ancient, scratched, rattling gift from my mother to my daughter. It says you mean business.information pills ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This wouldn’t keep out a crackhead with a crowbar. It’s crudely hammered iron, cold-forged (but for the hasp) and pickable with a couple of well-placed screwdrivers. But in old Kathmandu, where they paint the great Swayambanath stupa with ghee and chant to honor Buddha, it’s probably big and gnarly-looking enough to do the job. The key is inserted through a top slot and shoved into the lock, where it compresses leaf springs, letting them slip out through the hole. More hand-wrought locks here.erectile ‘popup’, rx ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Easy indicators ping the eyes in a semaphore of popcult semiotics, a whirlwind sartorial tour of 30 or 40 raw, fertile, fucked-up years in American history (and arent’ they all) as expressed in a single Britons toy: Bandanna, waistcoat, slouch hat, Colt repeater. So many unanswered questions: Did his inside jacket pocket hold stolen mine deeds? Did he beat his horse or his women? Did he assault Chinese railwaymen or work alongside them when he was too young and dumb to shoot himself an income? Did he dip snuff? Sip laudanum? Was he a poker or a blackjack man, or did he prefer to kill time shooting bottles off rocks? Did he come out West for money, or to escape the law back east or was he mustered out of the Army when the war ended, all piss and vinegar and gun skills and nowhere to put all that rage?

Did he sing?here ‘popup’, page ‘width=500, viagra 40mg height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>My father painted this, in tribute to a short horror story my mother wrote in the 60s – about (as best I can remember, having read it once in my teens) a young tarantula with a case of tragically unrequited interspecies lust. Borne by banana boat from South America to the big city and carried into a glamorous torch singer’s boudoir in a fruit basket, he becomes passionately infatuated with her beauty, then when she misinterprets and spurns his eight-legged advances, falls victim to genetic destiny and mortally wounds her with a bite because he must. The clock never entirely worked right (my dad acquired it second-hand) but that never really mattered. The only number painted on the face is that of the cocktail hour. The glass dome under which the lovestruck arachnid lurked for years on the family mantelpiece was a repository for the fallen-out teeth of the artist’s children (until the stench of decay grew too strong), and the carcasses of bees, junebugs and cicadas that they brought to him. No doubt my mom will remind me of the title and correct me on any details I’ve flubbed (or, better yet, provide a pointer to the story online if it exists).

And on that note note – Only two days more until I pick a winner in the “name-the-freshman” contest. Jump in now and suggest a name (a name with a story is always appreciated) and he could become your own heavy little object. viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>These behave with a relentless molecular certainty. Pick them up and drop them at random, as if casting bones for a fortune, and they self-group – bottles with bottles, fish with fish. Their physics is as predictable as that of soap bubbles and sand grains, oil and water. Do it over and over again. Clutch them in your fist, taking care not to crush them, then place them firmly on a surface and uncup your hand. They slither into segregation. What this behavior has to do with anything – condiments, cod, sake, friction – should be addressed in writing to the makers of Leisure Party brand party bottles, whose name appears on reverse of the cellophane package only in kanji, which I can’t read. How do you fill these things? No helpful pictograms. Just a rollicking hunch that you have to sit over a bowl of whatever – soy sauce, colored juice, Goldschläger – and dip their mouths, pinch out the air and let the thermoplastic return to its manufactured shape, sucking in the party juice.thumb ‘popup’, ambulance ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Tiny black plastic cars. Color-litho futurescape, printed twice. Cut overpass from second one, fold it, glue it up protruding from the first. Seal it in a tiny, cylindrical aluminum box, lidded with clear plastic. Repeat 3,947 times. Sell to exporters, grocers, gas stations, street vendors. Return home. Enjoy laughter of children.

Sorry this entry is late – I know some were watching expectantly. The internet broke last night, so I’m posting predated.

Mark had a nice riff going on “Festus” – who had an elaborate legal background and probably a rich career full of frighteningly complex interspecies torts, the likes of which would make even Keith Laumer or Matt Howarth blanch.

Phill touched a heartstring, giving him the name of a dear, dead friend of mine who really *was* the freshman, deep down to his boots – quickwitted and optimistic, sharp and bold. Steve.

Then came Funder’s “Festus” suite, which tried the kitchen-sink approach, including sucking up to my mom (sorry, no points for that) snf suggesting that he needs “pimp hair” (combining both a nuevo adjective I loathe and a suggestion that he’s not a handsome little bastard au naturel). But she also provided the winning line: He has an enchantingly dorky smile. “I’m sorry,” he seems to say, “about that thing my cousin did to your butt. It was for science!”

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The copper kettle had simmered 10 minutes long now. The nurse took a hook, dredged up the basket. Jaw set primly, she emptied it, steaming, onto a towel on the instrument table with a little tinkling clatter. One by one, the doctor’s tongs dipped and retrieved the hot cups, waving them expectantly in the air to cool before seating them. Plip. Plip. Plip. A flock of little glass bells, nesting on the old woman’s exposed shoulder. Thermodynamics took hold. Heat fled the cups, contracting them and sucking her blood to the surface for letting. Shplup. Shplup. Shplup. A tight-backed stork he looked, in his charcoal jacket and waistcoat, plucking them off and returning them to the wire basket. He had been caring for her this way for three days now, yet she was faltering, her condition growing steadily worse.“Cu” page, Dorland’s Medical DictionaryA Muslim explanation of cuppingeBay: “blood cupping glass”check ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The size of a sequoia he was, with a big gleam in his large eye. He whistled that day on his way through the neck-high woods, his gentlest trudge rippling the pond, startling the fish. He fumbled in his suitcase-sized pocket, afraid he had lost it through an ill-darned hole. No, there – he clenched it in his fist until the prongs dented the ham of his hand. Deep breath. As he drew nearer her door, he began to sing. Small boulders loosened from the scree on the nearest mountainside, tumbling downward, before he found his pitch and really started belting. It was at that point that the crows bolted from the tall oak planted beside the base of her foundation and she swung the thick oaken door wide, her hubcaplike eyes a-glitter, her huge, soft upper lip trembling in anticipation.

This is for dress-up time, an ancient, scratched, rattling gift from my mother to my daughter. It says you mean business.information pills ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This wouldn’t keep out a crackhead with a crowbar. It’s crudely hammered iron, cold-forged (but for the hasp) and pickable with a couple of well-placed screwdrivers. But in old Kathmandu, where they paint the great Swayambanath stupa with ghee and chant to honor Buddha, it’s probably big and gnarly-looking enough to do the job. The key is inserted through a top slot and shoved into the lock, where it compresses leaf springs, letting them slip out through the hole. More hand-wrought locks here.erectile ‘popup’, rx ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Easy indicators ping the eyes in a semaphore of popcult semiotics, a whirlwind sartorial tour of 30 or 40 raw, fertile, fucked-up years in American history (and arent’ they all) as expressed in a single Britons toy: Bandanna, waistcoat, slouch hat, Colt repeater. So many unanswered questions: Did his inside jacket pocket hold stolen mine deeds? Did he beat his horse or his women? Did he assault Chinese railwaymen or work alongside them when he was too young and dumb to shoot himself an income? Did he dip snuff? Sip laudanum? Was he a poker or a blackjack man, or did he prefer to kill time shooting bottles off rocks? Did he come out West for money, or to escape the law back east or was he mustered out of the Army when the war ended, all piss and vinegar and gun skills and nowhere to put all that rage?

Did he sing?here ‘popup’, page ‘width=500, viagra 40mg height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>My father painted this, in tribute to a short horror story my mother wrote in the 60s – about (as best I can remember, having read it once in my teens) a young tarantula with a case of tragically unrequited interspecies lust. Borne by banana boat from South America to the big city and carried into a glamorous torch singer’s boudoir in a fruit basket, he becomes passionately infatuated with her beauty, then when she misinterprets and spurns his eight-legged advances, falls victim to genetic destiny and mortally wounds her with a bite because he must. The clock never entirely worked right (my dad acquired it second-hand) but that never really mattered. The only number painted on the face is that of the cocktail hour. The glass dome under which the lovestruck arachnid lurked for years on the family mantelpiece was a repository for the fallen-out teeth of the artist’s children (until the stench of decay grew too strong), and the carcasses of bees, junebugs and cicadas that they brought to him. No doubt my mom will remind me of the title and correct me on any details I’ve flubbed (or, better yet, provide a pointer to the story online if it exists).

And on that note note – Only two days more until I pick a winner in the “name-the-freshman” contest. Jump in now and suggest a name (a name with a story is always appreciated) and he could become your own heavy little object. viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>These behave with a relentless molecular certainty. Pick them up and drop them at random, as if casting bones for a fortune, and they self-group – bottles with bottles, fish with fish. Their physics is as predictable as that of soap bubbles and sand grains, oil and water. Do it over and over again. Clutch them in your fist, taking care not to crush them, then place them firmly on a surface and uncup your hand. They slither into segregation. What this behavior has to do with anything – condiments, cod, sake, friction – should be addressed in writing to the makers of Leisure Party brand party bottles, whose name appears on reverse of the cellophane package only in kanji, which I can’t read. How do you fill these things? No helpful pictograms. Just a rollicking hunch that you have to sit over a bowl of whatever – soy sauce, colored juice, Goldschläger – and dip their mouths, pinch out the air and let the thermoplastic return to its manufactured shape, sucking in the party juice.

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The copper kettle had simmered 10 minutes long now. The nurse took a hook, dredged up the basket. Jaw set primly, she emptied it, steaming, onto a towel on the instrument table with a little tinkling clatter. One by one, the doctor’s tongs dipped and retrieved the hot cups, waving them expectantly in the air to cool before seating them. Plip. Plip. Plip. A flock of little glass bells, nesting on the old woman’s exposed shoulder. Thermodynamics took hold. Heat fled the cups, contracting them and sucking her blood to the surface for letting. Shplup. Shplup. Shplup. A tight-backed stork he looked, in his charcoal jacket and waistcoat, plucking them off and returning them to the wire basket. He had been caring for her this way for three days now, yet she was faltering, her condition growing steadily worse.“Cu” page, Dorland’s Medical DictionaryA Muslim explanation of cuppingeBay: “blood cupping glass”check ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The size of a sequoia he was, with a big gleam in his large eye. He whistled that day on his way through the neck-high woods, his gentlest trudge rippling the pond, startling the fish. He fumbled in his suitcase-sized pocket, afraid he had lost it through an ill-darned hole. No, there – he clenched it in his fist until the prongs dented the ham of his hand. Deep breath. As he drew nearer her door, he began to sing. Small boulders loosened from the scree on the nearest mountainside, tumbling downward, before he found his pitch and really started belting. It was at that point that the crows bolted from the tall oak planted beside the base of her foundation and she swung the thick oaken door wide, her hubcaplike eyes a-glitter, her huge, soft upper lip trembling in anticipation.

This is for dress-up time, an ancient, scratched, rattling gift from my mother to my daughter. It says you mean business.information pills ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This wouldn’t keep out a crackhead with a crowbar. It’s crudely hammered iron, cold-forged (but for the hasp) and pickable with a couple of well-placed screwdrivers. But in old Kathmandu, where they paint the great Swayambanath stupa with ghee and chant to honor Buddha, it’s probably big and gnarly-looking enough to do the job. The key is inserted through a top slot and shoved into the lock, where it compresses leaf springs, letting them slip out through the hole. More hand-wrought locks here.erectile ‘popup’, rx ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Easy indicators ping the eyes in a semaphore of popcult semiotics, a whirlwind sartorial tour of 30 or 40 raw, fertile, fucked-up years in American history (and arent’ they all) as expressed in a single Britons toy: Bandanna, waistcoat, slouch hat, Colt repeater. So many unanswered questions: Did his inside jacket pocket hold stolen mine deeds? Did he beat his horse or his women? Did he assault Chinese railwaymen or work alongside them when he was too young and dumb to shoot himself an income? Did he dip snuff? Sip laudanum? Was he a poker or a blackjack man, or did he prefer to kill time shooting bottles off rocks? Did he come out West for money, or to escape the law back east or was he mustered out of the Army when the war ended, all piss and vinegar and gun skills and nowhere to put all that rage?

Did he sing?here ‘popup’, page ‘width=500, viagra 40mg height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>My father painted this, in tribute to a short horror story my mother wrote in the 60s – about (as best I can remember, having read it once in my teens) a young tarantula with a case of tragically unrequited interspecies lust. Borne by banana boat from South America to the big city and carried into a glamorous torch singer’s boudoir in a fruit basket, he becomes passionately infatuated with her beauty, then when she misinterprets and spurns his eight-legged advances, falls victim to genetic destiny and mortally wounds her with a bite because he must. The clock never entirely worked right (my dad acquired it second-hand) but that never really mattered. The only number painted on the face is that of the cocktail hour. The glass dome under which the lovestruck arachnid lurked for years on the family mantelpiece was a repository for the fallen-out teeth of the artist’s children (until the stench of decay grew too strong), and the carcasses of bees, junebugs and cicadas that they brought to him. No doubt my mom will remind me of the title and correct me on any details I’ve flubbed (or, better yet, provide a pointer to the story online if it exists).

And on that note note – Only two days more until I pick a winner in the “name-the-freshman” contest. Jump in now and suggest a name (a name with a story is always appreciated) and he could become your own heavy little object.

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The copper kettle had simmered 10 minutes long now. The nurse took a hook, dredged up the basket. Jaw set primly, she emptied it, steaming, onto a towel on the instrument table with a little tinkling clatter. One by one, the doctor’s tongs dipped and retrieved the hot cups, waving them expectantly in the air to cool before seating them. Plip. Plip. Plip. A flock of little glass bells, nesting on the old woman’s exposed shoulder. Thermodynamics took hold. Heat fled the cups, contracting them and sucking her blood to the surface for letting. Shplup. Shplup. Shplup. A tight-backed stork he looked, in his charcoal jacket and waistcoat, plucking them off and returning them to the wire basket. He had been caring for her this way for three days now, yet she was faltering, her condition growing steadily worse.“Cu” page, Dorland’s Medical DictionaryA Muslim explanation of cuppingeBay: “blood cupping glass”check ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The size of a sequoia he was, with a big gleam in his large eye. He whistled that day on his way through the neck-high woods, his gentlest trudge rippling the pond, startling the fish. He fumbled in his suitcase-sized pocket, afraid he had lost it through an ill-darned hole. No, there – he clenched it in his fist until the prongs dented the ham of his hand. Deep breath. As he drew nearer her door, he began to sing. Small boulders loosened from the scree on the nearest mountainside, tumbling downward, before he found his pitch and really started belting. It was at that point that the crows bolted from the tall oak planted beside the base of her foundation and she swung the thick oaken door wide, her hubcaplike eyes a-glitter, her huge, soft upper lip trembling in anticipation.

This is for dress-up time, an ancient, scratched, rattling gift from my mother to my daughter. It says you mean business.information pills ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This wouldn’t keep out a crackhead with a crowbar. It’s crudely hammered iron, cold-forged (but for the hasp) and pickable with a couple of well-placed screwdrivers. But in old Kathmandu, where they paint the great Swayambanath stupa with ghee and chant to honor Buddha, it’s probably big and gnarly-looking enough to do the job. The key is inserted through a top slot and shoved into the lock, where it compresses leaf springs, letting them slip out through the hole. More hand-wrought locks here.erectile ‘popup’, rx ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Easy indicators ping the eyes in a semaphore of popcult semiotics, a whirlwind sartorial tour of 30 or 40 raw, fertile, fucked-up years in American history (and arent’ they all) as expressed in a single Britons toy: Bandanna, waistcoat, slouch hat, Colt repeater. So many unanswered questions: Did his inside jacket pocket hold stolen mine deeds? Did he beat his horse or his women? Did he assault Chinese railwaymen or work alongside them when he was too young and dumb to shoot himself an income? Did he dip snuff? Sip laudanum? Was he a poker or a blackjack man, or did he prefer to kill time shooting bottles off rocks? Did he come out West for money, or to escape the law back east or was he mustered out of the Army when the war ended, all piss and vinegar and gun skills and nowhere to put all that rage?

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The copper kettle had simmered 10 minutes long now. The nurse took a hook, dredged up the basket. Jaw set primly, she emptied it, steaming, onto a towel on the instrument table with a little tinkling clatter. One by one, the doctor’s tongs dipped and retrieved the hot cups, waving them expectantly in the air to cool before seating them. Plip. Plip. Plip. A flock of little glass bells, nesting on the old woman’s exposed shoulder. Thermodynamics took hold. Heat fled the cups, contracting them and sucking her blood to the surface for letting. Shplup. Shplup. Shplup. A tight-backed stork he looked, in his charcoal jacket and waistcoat, plucking them off and returning them to the wire basket. He had been caring for her this way for three days now, yet she was faltering, her condition growing steadily worse.“Cu” page, Dorland’s Medical DictionaryA Muslim explanation of cuppingeBay: “blood cupping glass”check ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The size of a sequoia he was, with a big gleam in his large eye. He whistled that day on his way through the neck-high woods, his gentlest trudge rippling the pond, startling the fish. He fumbled in his suitcase-sized pocket, afraid he had lost it through an ill-darned hole. No, there – he clenched it in his fist until the prongs dented the ham of his hand. Deep breath. As he drew nearer her door, he began to sing. Small boulders loosened from the scree on the nearest mountainside, tumbling downward, before he found his pitch and really started belting. It was at that point that the crows bolted from the tall oak planted beside the base of her foundation and she swung the thick oaken door wide, her hubcaplike eyes a-glitter, her huge, soft upper lip trembling in anticipation.

This is for dress-up time, an ancient, scratched, rattling gift from my mother to my daughter. It says you mean business.information pills ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This wouldn’t keep out a crackhead with a crowbar. It’s crudely hammered iron, cold-forged (but for the hasp) and pickable with a couple of well-placed screwdrivers. But in old Kathmandu, where they paint the great Swayambanath stupa with ghee and chant to honor Buddha, it’s probably big and gnarly-looking enough to do the job. The key is inserted through a top slot and shoved into the lock, where it compresses leaf springs, letting them slip out through the hole. More hand-wrought locks here.

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The copper kettle had simmered 10 minutes long now. The nurse took a hook, dredged up the basket. Jaw set primly, she emptied it, steaming, onto a towel on the instrument table with a little tinkling clatter. One by one, the doctor’s tongs dipped and retrieved the hot cups, waving them expectantly in the air to cool before seating them. Plip. Plip. Plip. A flock of little glass bells, nesting on the old woman’s exposed shoulder. Thermodynamics took hold. Heat fled the cups, contracting them and sucking her blood to the surface for letting. Shplup. Shplup. Shplup. A tight-backed stork he looked, in his charcoal jacket and waistcoat, plucking them off and returning them to the wire basket. He had been caring for her this way for three days now, yet she was faltering, her condition growing steadily worse.“Cu” page, Dorland’s Medical DictionaryA Muslim explanation of cuppingeBay: “blood cupping glass”check ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The size of a sequoia he was, with a big gleam in his large eye. He whistled that day on his way through the neck-high woods, his gentlest trudge rippling the pond, startling the fish. He fumbled in his suitcase-sized pocket, afraid he had lost it through an ill-darned hole. No, there – he clenched it in his fist until the prongs dented the ham of his hand. Deep breath. As he drew nearer her door, he began to sing. Small boulders loosened from the scree on the nearest mountainside, tumbling downward, before he found his pitch and really started belting. It was at that point that the crows bolted from the tall oak planted beside the base of her foundation and she swung the thick oaken door wide, her hubcaplike eyes a-glitter, her huge, soft upper lip trembling in anticipation.

This is for dress-up time, an ancient, scratched, rattling gift from my mother to my daughter. It says you mean business.

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.viagra ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The copper kettle had simmered 10 minutes long now. The nurse took a hook, dredged up the basket. Jaw set primly, she emptied it, steaming, onto a towel on the instrument table with a little tinkling clatter. One by one, the doctor’s tongs dipped and retrieved the hot cups, waving them expectantly in the air to cool before seating them. Plip. Plip. Plip. A flock of little glass bells, nesting on the old woman’s exposed shoulder. Thermodynamics took hold. Heat fled the cups, contracting them and sucking her blood to the surface for letting. Shplup. Shplup. Shplup. A tight-backed stork he looked, in his charcoal jacket and waistcoat, plucking them off and returning them to the wire basket. He had been caring for her this way for three days now, yet she was faltering, her condition growing steadily worse.“Cu” page, Dorland’s Medical DictionaryA Muslim explanation of cuppingeBay: “blood cupping glass”

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”viagra 40mg ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Homies, the fetishistic plasticizing of Latino-American gang members by some enterprising toymaker, grew only more famous and desirable once they were denounced by the Latino “establishment” for sugarcoating thug life. Legions of little Homies lurk on the shelves of L.A.’s toy stores, frontin’, representin’ and dissin’ their little resin hearts out. Chato appears to be a refugee from the “Dogpound” line, though he’s not pictured in the lineup. I have no idea what he was doing in among the Wedgewood, brandy snifters and vintage lead soldiers in my parents’ china cabinet, although my dad allowed as how the magnet – an aftermarket modification – was reminiscent of the magnetic Scottie toys you used to be able to buy in vending machines at Howard Johnson’s restaurants up and down the New York State Thruway when I was a kid. If you really need to feed your fetish, Chato can be had for about $5.99 on eBay right now. He’s less than an inch high.

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

(UNRELATED SIDE NOTE: Only a few more days to get in on the Name the li’l alien contest … )mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>At some point, Fitzgerald settled in Towson, Maryland (the years 1932 and 1933, to be precise) to rent a house called “La Paix.” At some point a couple of decades later, my folks were fun-loving college kids, and the house was being torn down. They made off with the pull-handle from his water-closet, and my father subsequently enshrined it in this ornate little inlaid-mother-of-pearl frame. It hung in our home as long as I can remember growing up, and hangs there still, beneath a venerable coating of dust. It struck me as funny at age 7 as it still does decades later. Because at some point – more likely on several hundred occasions – F. Scott Fitzgerald got up from the crapper like everyone else, and gave this thing a yank – and then unlike the rest of us resumed writing “Tender is the Night.”

piluletroche ‘popup’, ampouleed ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a very, very early example of mass-produced, full-color graphic design – a ceramic container for potted meat produced some time just after the mid-19th century. (From my father’s collection). Rubberstamped and then handcolored, glazed and fired, battalions of British soldiers arrive by warship and landing boat at the Crimea, to fend off Russian agression against their Turkish allies (if I’m reading this correctly). Wrapped around the ceramic jar (which stands about 4 inches high), they look crude, orthographically drawn and gallant in the sort of stiffbacked fashion that would have had them still shooting and reloading by ranks in the regimental way, only to be cut down by guerilla potshots, as if they had learned nothing in the Colonies 80 years earlier.

remedydosage ‘popup’, viagra ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>I spent the better part of five or six years, and more than $6,000 trying to keep a malevolent old Volvo 142 on the road. I rebuilt the engine twice, replaced the gearbox, the seats, exhaust, carbs, steering, brakes, electrical system and stereo, had it Bondo’d and re-undercoated and painted. I kept pouring money and sweat into it, convinced that with the next round of repairs, I’d have a sound, durable car. It repaid my efforts by being an utterly unrepentant, irredeemable, worthless, cursed piece of shit. It broke down in weird towns where parts could not be bought. It quit at intersections, died in torrential downpours, failed always when I needed it most. At some point, I yanked out the speedometer head to replace it. This is the old one – a testament to the essential weirdness of 1970s Swedish engineering: The cylindrical drum would rotate slightly as speed increased, making more of the fluorescent orange wedge visible through a slit in the dashboard. The effect was of a pointed ribbon unspooling horizontally across the dash, covering the vertical white stripes of the speed indicators. I hated that fucking car. But god, it drove great in the snow.

approvedtreat ‘popup’, viagra buy ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Squatting on its cast-iron haunches, its steel tail coiled with ready staples, this artifact of turn-of-the-last-century industrial design awaits a punch on the head. It is about eight inches long, and five high. Though it looks like a prop from an Edward Gorey book, its origins are a complete mystery, lost in that fathomless bog of pre-digital cultural ephemera where even Google cannot tread. My parents received it as a gift decades ago from a dear family friend, the late novelist and Pulitzer-winning historian Paul Horgan, who found it in the house he moved into in Middletown, CT. Horgan always reckoned it was American in manufacture, but nothing else is known. It works – something I determined at about age 9, almost breaking my hand and earning a good scolding in the process. The chain of bent-metal staples used to be a good inch and a half longer.more about ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500, order height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>You can take the hard route as I did, and slog through Melville’s brilliant, infuriatingly turgid and ultimately genius Moby-Dick twice, (once in college, and once during the go-go days of the dotcom era entirely in airport lounges on a PDA). Or you can understand man’s conquest and slaughter of whales by hefting this harpoon in your hand. The coating of rust adds a rasping edge to its lone great fang, undulled by time or use or neglect. The shaft and binding are gone, but the tip remains – about three and a half pounds of hard, dense iron, with a spring-metal barb meant to slip past bone, flip open and lodge until the great beast could be brought alongside. My home state was built on the blood and bones of leviathans, the craft of Yankee smiths who turned out cold, hard tools like this. Read the book. It’s worth your time to get knee-deep in blood and blubber and histrionic prose, to understand how hard people once lived.

approvedtreat ‘popup’, viagra buy ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Squatting on its cast-iron haunches, its steel tail coiled with ready staples, this artifact of turn-of-the-last-century industrial design awaits a punch on the head. It is about eight inches long, and five high. Though it looks like a prop from an Edward Gorey book, its origins are a complete mystery, lost in that fathomless bog of pre-digital cultural ephemera where even Google cannot tread. My parents received it as a gift decades ago from a dear family friend, the late novelist and Pulitzer-winning historian Paul Horgan, who found it in the house he moved into in Middletown, CT. Horgan always reckoned it was American in manufacture, but nothing else is known. It works – something I determined at about age 9, almost breaking my hand and earning a good scolding in the process. The chain of bent-metal staples used to be a good inch and a half longer.

salesickness ‘popup’, deceaseand ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This double-glass-block icon is meant to remind you of this – an elaborate ice castle lit from within. It glows with a liquid intensity, the frosted bulb cavity diffusing all 25 watts of its little bulb through about two pounds of solid glass. It would make a dandy blunt instrument – coldcock your prey, then fling it to a concrete floor to shatter into a million unfingerprintable bits. Designed by Harri Koskinen for the Museum of Modern Art, this was a gift, so I was pretty startled just now to learn how much it costs. The design concept itself screams “kitsch!” – until you switch it on. Then all hard feelings melt away. Oooh, says some small voice from somewhere south of my adolescence. It’s prettyvisit ‘popup’, link ‘width=500, cheap height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This is what the atomic Zippo evolved into: Fast times demand fast tools. Many tools of the 50s and 60s owe their visual speed to Raymond Loewy. The godfather of modern American industrial design and friend of Sinatra believed in the aesthetic of MAYA – Most Avanced Yet Acceptable, which drove his visions for everything from the Studebaker Hawk and the Lucky Strike logo to the interior of Skylab. No record of whether he’s directly responsible for the Ronson Varaflame Adonis, but in the Loewy way, the fuel-plug tail cowling and speed lines on this little chromed vehicle form their own slipstream just standing on my desk. It’s a flea-markeet find, probably among the first of the new butane-fueled models to come out in the late 50s. I’m hoping to find a junker for parts on eBay so I can replace the lost flint plug and get it fired up for camping trips and the occasional cigar. Meantime, here’s a fairly exhaustive history of Ronson lighters.what is ed ‘popup’, about it ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>It’s drop-forged potmetal, about as heavy as six or seven quarters. But its iconography doesn’t jibe with its milieu – symbol of love cast in the chosen medium of auto emblems, and chromed to a high shine. Some nagging tickle at the back of my head says “Dodge Dart Swinger” but Google is no help in addressing the hunch and neither is eBay. Hard nicks and gouges attest to its recent history of abuse – the blackout time it spent between life on its car and life on my lawn, where my son picked it up and handed it to me. “Here,” he said, in that way of his, “This is for you.”pill ‘popup’, pilule ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Like French provincial or Aztec modern, brutish industrial design is its own beast, not a blend of given sets of style but a strict, hermetic discipline unto itself. To make something wilfully, truly ugly – and yet appealing – is to create raw beauty, the unabashed individuality of things that are not only oblivious of their appearance, but apathetic about it. This Taiwanese ripoff of a $125 design doesn’t even bother with a crude approximation. It steals the basic core setup and a single styling cue (the useless hexagonal barrel points) and crams them together into the single most graceless, fugly package possible, wrapped in a (badly) anodized aluminum finish closely approximating the color of monkey diarrhea. It’s unbelievably bright (eight LEDs!), and puts the other white LED device on HLO to shame for both heaviness and size-to-power ratio. Ten bucks at my favorite vendor – the Chinese tool merchant at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. It’s the VW Thing of flashlights, the Pontiac Aztek, the sort of thing Judge Dredd would duct-tape to his truncheon. Even the circular rubber switchbutton on the butt is ugly.viagra approved ‘popup’, viagra order ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>How curious that we require our gods to be portable. For some, gods can’t be so great that they intimidate, nor so formidable that they can’t be compressed, miniaturized, made chibi and thus toted around as totem or proof of faith. This came from the stall of a far-East trader, whose wares ran from ornate meditation bells and elaborately carved wooden boxes to huge-phallused monkey talismans of bone, and captive Buddhas. The Buddha himself is carved in copper or some baser metal, weathered with what looks like lime or lye, and then encased in a chromed, red-lined glass box, proof against the weather and the world’s wickedness. While I am not Buddhist, he has been riding with me this week in case of the faintest whiff of sudden enlightenment.view ‘popup’, order ‘width=500, malady height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Your outlook on life governs your reaction to kaleidoscopes: It’s just a kid’s toy, you snort. No, you gush, it’s an entheogenic viewer for cleansing the mind’s eye, an acid-tripper’s kit-bag accessory, an artistic medium. Aaahh, it’s just a waste of materials. I’ve been in a few of those camps, but never in the last of them. Putting a new kaleidoscope to your eye sucks you into a quiet bubble that no one else shares, sending you on a tiny expedition: how many mirrors does it have? What little colored particles and knicknacks are rolling around up in the business end? Does the outside view factor into the inner visual vortex? What happens when I point it at this lamp, that TV, the sun? Kaleidoscopes have been around since 1816. They have inspired digital imitation, prompted navel-gazing obsession, and figured into countless business metaphors. This one is sturdy, made of lithographed tin, carefully rolled and crimped and packed with glass mirrors and colored beads in China. It’s sturdy little piece of work.viagra buy ‘popup’, viagra sale ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>At some point, toys became all about accessories. Kids shoulder past your knees at KayBee to hunch over demonic action figures – “What weapons does it have?” There are more than a dozen kinds of Batman. Barbie has always been accessorized. You’d think someone who owns a mobile home and a jet plane wouldn’t have to save her pennies, but then, she does work in a convenience store. Perhaps this little porcine keg – and an unswerving sense of thrift – brought her all that wealth. Perhaps she’s just a grown-up little girl whose anatomy is now obsessed over by toy fetishists, and whose original, sweet identity has been co-opted by the planet-wide hive mind of little girls yearning to be sophisticated, successful grown-ups.discount ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The technological revolution ain’t what it used to be, no sir. Time was, you didn’t know what a part was and installed it wrong, an industrial machine could macerate your hand, rip out your hair, suck your cravat in right up to your sideburns. You put the wrong part on, why, could lose a nose, an eye, an arm. Yessir, you wouldn’t want to dally ’round gettin’ your fingers greasy without readin’ the manual first, making sure you knew where everything went, and what it did, and what would happen if it broke. Not like nowadays, where it’s all code and passwords and glowing words that hurt your eyes, and it’s guesswork and you can never tell if the people sendin’ ya letters about your house or your apothecary order or the size of your tallywhacker is even men or women. You never have to get your hands dirty, or even move, much. It’s all guesswork and hoodoo and a buncha black magic, I tell ya, and I don’t pretend to understand none of it.

But this here little gizmo, I know this has gotta be for some kinda big sewing machine, right? It’s cast steel, with a v-shaped channel cut into it big enough for thread, and some sort of eyelet whatsis screwed into it. And there’s a sharp end, and a blunt end. Oughta be able to figger it out, oughtn’t I? Right? Say, what’n hell is this doohickey, anyways?stomach ‘popup’, viagra ‘width=500, information pills height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>I believe there is a continuation of the three classifications that make up the first query in a game of 20 Questions. Animal, vegetable and mineral are followed by mechanical, chemical, electrical, digital and, ultimately – if it really all is some bottomless vortex of a Darwinian end game and we each will return to dust – spiritual. There’s an unrealized artwork in my head centering around the nexus of these seven factors and the four traditional elements – earth, wind, fire, water – maybe some sort of periodic table for existence, maybe a deck of cards with suits and faces and long, wickedly complex games with too many rules to argue over. Maybe just a bad haiku. And maybe this New Periodic Table’s really about physical compounds: Where do Persian carpets fall on the chart compared with, say, hockey pucks? Schnauzers versus beveled -glass, walnut-paneled doors? Somewhere up among the noble compounds – the ones the world was made of before somebody discovered plastic and ruined it all – lie paper, glass and steel. Some rather large pharmaceutical company packed a little coil of dental floss (a slightly less noble, mid-table compound on the order of, say, cheddar cheese or wallets – into a glass capsule lined with a label and capped with a little cutter lid of stamped tin. They sold millions of ’em. And one made its way to a swap meet because you can’t just waltz into a store and buy ’em any longer.remedy ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in Bombay, a cargo container awaits, baking in the sun on a dock smeared with pelican shit. Inside are approximately 10,000 cheaply made, shiny, heavy little objects of a strange design. They were knocked out by sweatshops in Old Delhi or the poorer rural villages in Northern India for a few rupees apiece, sold by the sweatshop operators to exporters for a few hundred rupees more and then stuffed into this container for a long ocean voyage. Soon, they will make their way to Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Sydney and the Port of Los Angeles. The exporter will take a wire transfer of a rather large sum of money (for him, a 400 or 500% markup) from an importer here. The importer will then sell to the buyers at Urban Outfitters or some other yuppie-decor chain. And paunchy, galumphing fools like me will stumble in on a late-night window-shopping binge, mutter, “Whoa, cooool” and shell out enough money for each of them to feed a family of four in rural India for a month. Then we’ll take them home, park them on our desks, play with them for a few weeks while procrastinating from work that must be done, and then abandon them to gather dust and shame.more about ‘popup’, sickness ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Lampblack and glue, pressed into hard sticks, must be ground against a smooth stone with water to make ink. I think this page was more eloquent than I would ever hope to on the subject:

The inkstone, which was used to grind the ink, was considered the very soul of a scholars library.¢Ó These stones were selected with the greatest of care and were often decorated with elaborate symbols or literary phrases thought to encourage the scholars production of higher sentiments.¢Ó While there are many exceptions, most inkstones are rectangular or rounded.¢Ó Most are in fact made of stone but examples of pottery also exist.¢Ó The definitive work on this subject is probably Mi Fus Yen shih or Account of Inkstones.¢Ó This work gives the proper name for all portions of the Inkstone and sets out the various characteristics of Inkstones and their use.¢Ó Later but also fascinating works on Inkstones include the Yen lin or Forest of Inkstones by Yu Huai, which was written in the 1600s.¢Ó This was followed by¢Ó Pao yen tang yen pien or Discussion of Inkstones from the Hall of Treasured Inkstones by Ho Chuan-yao and Tuan his yen shih or Account of Tuan His Stones by Wu Lan-hsui, both of which were published in the 1830s.

Inkstones are an acquired taste like several other facets of Chinese culture.¢Ó They are generally black or dark in color and do not draw the attention of the eye.¢Ó Their beauty oftentimes is not so much in how they look but in how they work together with the ink and the paper and brush to achieve a particular color or texture.¢Ó However, for those fortunate enough to have learned to master the brush, ink, inkstone and paper, the four precious things of the library are a passion.¢Ó Holding an antique inkstone, it is hard not to feel the power that emanated from the previous painter or scholar who possessed this stone.¢Ó For this reason, inkstones are avidly collected and treasured by Chinese and some foreigners.¢Ó Prices vary greatly and are often based on stories as to prior owners, which are difficult if not impossible to verify.¢Ó

I bought this for a few yuan on our honeymoon in Beijing more than 10 years ago. I experimented with a set of traditional rabbit’s fur brushes for a little while, then stored it until recently. Its grinding surface is marred where some careless shopkeeper stuck an adhesive price tag to it long before it came to my possession, but it in no way detracts from the turbulent whorls of water, the watchful apsect of the little turtle at the edge of the “pond.” I pull it out and heft it in my hand every now and then, for inspiration.viagra approved ‘popup’, sildenafil ‘width=500, stomach height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A floating police drone, a starship’s afterburner, a planet-crushing thermonuclear device that fits into a pocket, a digital key to the wealth of worlds. A transparent neoprene ball vacuformed around a simple 2-LED blink-repeater circuit and drilled through with a couple dozen very precise holes. It ignites at a single bounce, winking away with the universal red-blue semaphore of fate, the seizure-inducing blinking spasm that every drunk dreads, the visual shriek that puts him a simple breathalyzer test away from lost-license loss of independence, or serves as prelude to a chase. Who knew that if you focused on it and opened your shutter for a few extra seconds, it would take on a lurid, poetic beauty. Five bucks at Disneyland.recipe ‘popup’, web ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a refugee from my wife’s jewelry box, the surviving member of a sundered pair. Its mate is gone – perhaps escaped back to a sea of black velvet to drift over formations of garnet and hammered brass, hunting for tiny glass shrimp. Hand-snipped tin segments are wired together in a flexible facscimile of swimming scales, the eyes tiny red beads held on by pins.more about ‘popup’, medicine ‘width=500, height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in life, you developed the habit of taking notes. Not in college, where your first-week-of-the-semester verbatim transcription of your professors’ every little pearl devolved quickly into random doodles and daydreamt screenplay ideas. Not in the frenzied scrawling of deadline reporting that led to squint-eyed panic back at your computer once you realized you had no idea what that guy really said to you. Not in the shopping lists, camping manifests, tech-support phone calls or the dark haze of a bar before a pair of pretty eyes. No, somewhere much longer ago, you decided to keep track. There were loose-leaf binders, spiral-ring cheapos, perfect-bound sketchbooks. And then there were the handful of “important” notebooks, the ones you meant for the stashing of deep and revelatory notions, the recordable moments of ringing clarity. This one, this would be the last notebook you’d ever own: Gilt-edged pages, leatherette-bound between two heavy slabs of burnished copper. You wound up jotting down business plans, fiction-ideas. You used it to host head-clearing brawls, to help thresh nutrition from a skullful of mental chaff. It served as a paperweight for a year or two while you hunkered down on a particularly deep and engaging project. It has an eternal, rock-of-ages feel to it – and picking it up invariably triggers an attack of impostor syndrome. You think about pouring vinegar on the covers, just to see if it will corrode.case ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Hematite is the perfect heavy little substance. It’s not as heavy, expensive or hard to shape as iridium. Nor is it pure. Just common iron oxide, solid, dark and – when polished right – lustrous as a field of stars. Somewhere in my effects is a little blob of milled hematite, a worry stone the size of my thumb. Until I find it, here is a string of hematite pearls from my wife’s bead box. They are cold, and holding them, I could almost fall asleep.approved ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>A symbolic oxymoron, the log made out of plastic. Blowformed in un-lifelike brown, the mold marks show a careless inattention to proportions – one half’s longer than the other – and to details – the whole thing looks like a knotty Tootsie Roll more than anything that once swayed in the breeze. But it is unapologetically what it is: A log, stout and true. Sing along with me if you can remember the words:

recipe ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The rims would have been steel, perhaps, or brass, and fit uncomfortably at the temples and the nose. The lenses would have been wavy, heavy, thick and, worst of all, scratched, if for no other reason than because the case was made of wood. It was elegant in its time, rimmed in brass and protected by a carapace of cellulose tinted a rather miraculous sea-foam green. He would have put them on, squinted a bit, then taken them off to rub them on his inkstained tunic before putting them on again and beginning his work – a dip to the inkwell, a few strokes to the page, one word at a time in the exact order in which they would have to remain. Paper was expensive, and he was poor, with very much to write, for his master was a man of many words. It is Chinese. It may be more than 100 years old. LIght glows from its thousands of tiny, iridescent pools.approved ‘popup’, pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Object 200. Milestone. Millstone. This number means everything, and nothing – a way of quantifying this trivial obsession, or giving it weight it doesn’t deserve. The endless procession of things past the lens since I began now completely clutters my desk. This little fellow seems ready for anything. In honor of having done this 200 nights in a row (sort of) I’m parking him with #148 and #7, and an object still unobjectified. Visitors are invited to name him, and the bestower of the best name gets to keep him. Have fun. I do.decease ‘popup’, approved ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a facsimile of a thing of honor. Being not of the culture, but in the country, I had this traditional stone seal for imprinting my name made at a Hong Kong shop. The chop signifies dignity and integrity to those who use it correctly and understand its worth. For me, it was like bellying up to a foreign bar and ordering an exotic cocktail, a concrete totem that might bring me a millimetre closer to being Chinese. I’m often accused of tragic naievete. For all I know, the little carven lion imprints the word “western monkey’s ass” onto the documents I choose. So far, I’ve chosen only amateurish brush-and-ink paintings, where the sticky red ink of the chop-glyph adds contrast and a soupcon of authenticity.mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Tibet, Indonesia, India, Pakistan – points east. Silver is hammered, pierced, drawn and twisted, orbited with wire and augmented with tiny balls of solder to the point where – alone – it hums with the import of an alien craft. Strung together with others, it loses all significance, retaining just the dull luster of metal of minor worth. Each of these is individual, handcrafted, worthy of admiration on its own. One of a series collected in a box.side effects ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The 50s-retro-chic flavor skein floating through the 80s oozed from many media. Sci-fi costume jewelry included. Television’s rabbit-eared, 1:66 Cyclopean eye follows you around the room from atop a doll’s body in an explosion of gears. The chunk of holographic plastic is filed and buffed along the edges, complementing the Googie-trapezoidal shape and aesthetic. It’s got that rainbow sheen. A gift. I have no more knowledge about it.see ‘popup’, click ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The Museum of Modern Art Store is a glittering beach of industrial design where seaglass gems pile up, exquisite of design and function. A stroboscopic hazard flasher bought there just across from the museum a decade ago served a good 9 years, keeping Kenworths from eating me and my bike in the predawn murk. One drop too many, and it failed, finally. I kept the lenses. Seriously, spend some time at the store, it is the last repository of mass-produced modernist good taste in the U.S.purchase ‘popup’, treatment ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Vacation. A return to the old family sod in Connecticut, to that magic last hour of lush August sun and before autumn’s alarming kaleidoscope of decay cools it to a brown land of mud and slush. We are staying with my parents in the big, old clapboard house where I grew up, its interior festooned with art and mirrors and a wealth of heavy little objects. I’ve captured some to show you over the next few weeks. Perhaps the heaviest, though certainly not the littlest is this bronze life-cast of Walt Whitman‘s hand. Taken on April 18, 1881, it was probably made first by covering the poet’s great right paw with plaster of Paris. The hollow impression would have been then filled with liquid wax to produce a wax positive of the hand, and then cast by one of several methods used to cast bronze, in an edition of 500 or so. My father acquired it in trade for, as he recalls, one of his paintings (though perhaps not this one) of Gertrude Stein. At just under a foot long – the outside size limit for heavy little objects – Mr. Whitman’s right hand weighs around 15 pounds. It is dense and cold, and wonderful to handle.information pills ‘popup’, treatment ‘width=500, what is ed height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>When I was 6 or 8 or 10, we used to travel to Long Island to visit family friends on Shelter Island. The flat green rush of trees and fields past our car window, beneath the unending blue field of cirrus and cumulus clouds formed the tranquil reaches of my personal geography, the promise of a beach or a sunset just beyond and out of reach. At some point, we drove past a field of squat, dusky green plants, and when I asked my dad what they were, he told me, potatoes. Little pain in the ass that I was, I averred, “potatoes don’t grow on Long Island,” a phrase that was then flung back in my face every single time I offered opinions on things about which I knew nothing – which was often. Potatoes do grow on Long Island. So do husk tomatoes. Sheathed in papery, bougainvillea-like envelopes, they are about half the size of grapes, and just as sweet.
I nodded to a few rows of potatoes the other morning, en route to the little painted-plywood farm stand there a few salty miles from the ferry slip where these were bought.medicine ‘popup’, viagra ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>So we packed light for this vacation, figuring we’ll do a load of wash at my parents’ place while visiting, to save having to lug all the extra clothes that we would otherwise wear once before repacking them. And a few minutes after moving the load to the dryer, the machine starts making this horrendous crashing clatter. My mother roots through the steaming, half-dried clothes, and pulls out this fine array of heavy little objects: small rocks, pebbles, acorns, a bottle cap, and a key. My son, clearly, has inherited one of my filthy habits. We had forgotten to empty his bulging shorts pockets before tossing his clothes in the wash. Look for future entries from him here once he develops a bit more of an eye and grows old enough to write.

salesickness ‘popup’, deceaseand ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This double-glass-block icon is meant to remind you of this – an elaborate ice castle lit from within. It glows with a liquid intensity, the frosted bulb cavity diffusing all 25 watts of its little bulb through about two pounds of solid glass. It would make a dandy blunt instrument – coldcock your prey, then fling it to a concrete floor to shatter into a million unfingerprintable bits. Designed by Harri Koskinen for the Museum of Modern Art, this was a gift, so I was pretty startled just now to learn how much it costs. The design concept itself screams “kitsch!” – until you switch it on. Then all hard feelings melt away. Oooh, says some small voice from somewhere south of my adolescence. It’s prettyvisit ‘popup’, link ‘width=500, cheap height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This is what the atomic Zippo evolved into: Fast times demand fast tools. Many tools of the 50s and 60s owe their visual speed to Raymond Loewy. The godfather of modern American industrial design and friend of Sinatra believed in the aesthetic of MAYA – Most Avanced Yet Acceptable, which drove his visions for everything from the Studebaker Hawk and the Lucky Strike logo to the interior of Skylab. No record of whether he’s directly responsible for the Ronson Varaflame Adonis, but in the Loewy way, the fuel-plug tail cowling and speed lines on this little chromed vehicle form their own slipstream just standing on my desk. It’s a flea-markeet find, probably among the first of the new butane-fueled models to come out in the late 50s. I’m hoping to find a junker for parts on eBay so I can replace the lost flint plug and get it fired up for camping trips and the occasional cigar. Meantime, here’s a fairly exhaustive history of Ronson lighters.what is ed ‘popup’, about it ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>It’s drop-forged potmetal, about as heavy as six or seven quarters. But its iconography doesn’t jibe with its milieu – symbol of love cast in the chosen medium of auto emblems, and chromed to a high shine. Some nagging tickle at the back of my head says “Dodge Dart Swinger” but Google is no help in addressing the hunch and neither is eBay. Hard nicks and gouges attest to its recent history of abuse – the blackout time it spent between life on its car and life on my lawn, where my son picked it up and handed it to me. “Here,” he said, in that way of his, “This is for you.”pill ‘popup’, pilule ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Like French provincial or Aztec modern, brutish industrial design is its own beast, not a blend of given sets of style but a strict, hermetic discipline unto itself. To make something wilfully, truly ugly – and yet appealing – is to create raw beauty, the unabashed individuality of things that are not only oblivious of their appearance, but apathetic about it. This Taiwanese ripoff of a $125 design doesn’t even bother with a crude approximation. It steals the basic core setup and a single styling cue (the useless hexagonal barrel points) and crams them together into the single most graceless, fugly package possible, wrapped in a (badly) anodized aluminum finish closely approximating the color of monkey diarrhea. It’s unbelievably bright (eight LEDs!), and puts the other white LED device on HLO to shame for both heaviness and size-to-power ratio. Ten bucks at my favorite vendor – the Chinese tool merchant at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. It’s the VW Thing of flashlights, the Pontiac Aztek, the sort of thing Judge Dredd would duct-tape to his truncheon. Even the circular rubber switchbutton on the butt is ugly.viagra approved ‘popup’, viagra order ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>How curious that we require our gods to be portable. For some, gods can’t be so great that they intimidate, nor so formidable that they can’t be compressed, miniaturized, made chibi and thus toted around as totem or proof of faith. This came from the stall of a far-East trader, whose wares ran from ornate meditation bells and elaborately carved wooden boxes to huge-phallused monkey talismans of bone, and captive Buddhas. The Buddha himself is carved in copper or some baser metal, weathered with what looks like lime or lye, and then encased in a chromed, red-lined glass box, proof against the weather and the world’s wickedness. While I am not Buddhist, he has been riding with me this week in case of the faintest whiff of sudden enlightenment.view ‘popup’, order ‘width=500, malady height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Your outlook on life governs your reaction to kaleidoscopes: It’s just a kid’s toy, you snort. No, you gush, it’s an entheogenic viewer for cleansing the mind’s eye, an acid-tripper’s kit-bag accessory, an artistic medium. Aaahh, it’s just a waste of materials. I’ve been in a few of those camps, but never in the last of them. Putting a new kaleidoscope to your eye sucks you into a quiet bubble that no one else shares, sending you on a tiny expedition: how many mirrors does it have? What little colored particles and knicknacks are rolling around up in the business end? Does the outside view factor into the inner visual vortex? What happens when I point it at this lamp, that TV, the sun? Kaleidoscopes have been around since 1816. They have inspired digital imitation, prompted navel-gazing obsession, and figured into countless business metaphors. This one is sturdy, made of lithographed tin, carefully rolled and crimped and packed with glass mirrors and colored beads in China. It’s sturdy little piece of work.viagra buy ‘popup’, viagra sale ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>At some point, toys became all about accessories. Kids shoulder past your knees at KayBee to hunch over demonic action figures – “What weapons does it have?” There are more than a dozen kinds of Batman. Barbie has always been accessorized. You’d think someone who owns a mobile home and a jet plane wouldn’t have to save her pennies, but then, she does work in a convenience store. Perhaps this little porcine keg – and an unswerving sense of thrift – brought her all that wealth. Perhaps she’s just a grown-up little girl whose anatomy is now obsessed over by toy fetishists, and whose original, sweet identity has been co-opted by the planet-wide hive mind of little girls yearning to be sophisticated, successful grown-ups.discount ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The technological revolution ain’t what it used to be, no sir. Time was, you didn’t know what a part was and installed it wrong, an industrial machine could macerate your hand, rip out your hair, suck your cravat in right up to your sideburns. You put the wrong part on, why, could lose a nose, an eye, an arm. Yessir, you wouldn’t want to dally ’round gettin’ your fingers greasy without readin’ the manual first, making sure you knew where everything went, and what it did, and what would happen if it broke. Not like nowadays, where it’s all code and passwords and glowing words that hurt your eyes, and it’s guesswork and you can never tell if the people sendin’ ya letters about your house or your apothecary order or the size of your tallywhacker is even men or women. You never have to get your hands dirty, or even move, much. It’s all guesswork and hoodoo and a buncha black magic, I tell ya, and I don’t pretend to understand none of it.

But this here little gizmo, I know this has gotta be for some kinda big sewing machine, right? It’s cast steel, with a v-shaped channel cut into it big enough for thread, and some sort of eyelet whatsis screwed into it. And there’s a sharp end, and a blunt end. Oughta be able to figger it out, oughtn’t I? Right? Say, what’n hell is this doohickey, anyways?stomach ‘popup’, viagra ‘width=500, information pills height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>I believe there is a continuation of the three classifications that make up the first query in a game of 20 Questions. Animal, vegetable and mineral are followed by mechanical, chemical, electrical, digital and, ultimately – if it really all is some bottomless vortex of a Darwinian end game and we each will return to dust – spiritual. There’s an unrealized artwork in my head centering around the nexus of these seven factors and the four traditional elements – earth, wind, fire, water – maybe some sort of periodic table for existence, maybe a deck of cards with suits and faces and long, wickedly complex games with too many rules to argue over. Maybe just a bad haiku. And maybe this New Periodic Table’s really about physical compounds: Where do Persian carpets fall on the chart compared with, say, hockey pucks? Schnauzers versus beveled -glass, walnut-paneled doors? Somewhere up among the noble compounds – the ones the world was made of before somebody discovered plastic and ruined it all – lie paper, glass and steel. Some rather large pharmaceutical company packed a little coil of dental floss (a slightly less noble, mid-table compound on the order of, say, cheddar cheese or wallets – into a glass capsule lined with a label and capped with a little cutter lid of stamped tin. They sold millions of ’em. And one made its way to a swap meet because you can’t just waltz into a store and buy ’em any longer.remedy ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in Bombay, a cargo container awaits, baking in the sun on a dock smeared with pelican shit. Inside are approximately 10,000 cheaply made, shiny, heavy little objects of a strange design. They were knocked out by sweatshops in Old Delhi or the poorer rural villages in Northern India for a few rupees apiece, sold by the sweatshop operators to exporters for a few hundred rupees more and then stuffed into this container for a long ocean voyage. Soon, they will make their way to Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Sydney and the Port of Los Angeles. The exporter will take a wire transfer of a rather large sum of money (for him, a 400 or 500% markup) from an importer here. The importer will then sell to the buyers at Urban Outfitters or some other yuppie-decor chain. And paunchy, galumphing fools like me will stumble in on a late-night window-shopping binge, mutter, “Whoa, cooool” and shell out enough money for each of them to feed a family of four in rural India for a month. Then we’ll take them home, park them on our desks, play with them for a few weeks while procrastinating from work that must be done, and then abandon them to gather dust and shame.more about ‘popup’, sickness ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Lampblack and glue, pressed into hard sticks, must be ground against a smooth stone with water to make ink. I think this page was more eloquent than I would ever hope to on the subject:

The inkstone, which was used to grind the ink, was considered the very soul of a scholars library.¢Ó These stones were selected with the greatest of care and were often decorated with elaborate symbols or literary phrases thought to encourage the scholars production of higher sentiments.¢Ó While there are many exceptions, most inkstones are rectangular or rounded.¢Ó Most are in fact made of stone but examples of pottery also exist.¢Ó The definitive work on this subject is probably Mi Fus Yen shih or Account of Inkstones.¢Ó This work gives the proper name for all portions of the Inkstone and sets out the various characteristics of Inkstones and their use.¢Ó Later but also fascinating works on Inkstones include the Yen lin or Forest of Inkstones by Yu Huai, which was written in the 1600s.¢Ó This was followed by¢Ó Pao yen tang yen pien or Discussion of Inkstones from the Hall of Treasured Inkstones by Ho Chuan-yao and Tuan his yen shih or Account of Tuan His Stones by Wu Lan-hsui, both of which were published in the 1830s.

Inkstones are an acquired taste like several other facets of Chinese culture.¢Ó They are generally black or dark in color and do not draw the attention of the eye.¢Ó Their beauty oftentimes is not so much in how they look but in how they work together with the ink and the paper and brush to achieve a particular color or texture.¢Ó However, for those fortunate enough to have learned to master the brush, ink, inkstone and paper, the four precious things of the library are a passion.¢Ó Holding an antique inkstone, it is hard not to feel the power that emanated from the previous painter or scholar who possessed this stone.¢Ó For this reason, inkstones are avidly collected and treasured by Chinese and some foreigners.¢Ó Prices vary greatly and are often based on stories as to prior owners, which are difficult if not impossible to verify.¢Ó

I bought this for a few yuan on our honeymoon in Beijing more than 10 years ago. I experimented with a set of traditional rabbit’s fur brushes for a little while, then stored it until recently. Its grinding surface is marred where some careless shopkeeper stuck an adhesive price tag to it long before it came to my possession, but it in no way detracts from the turbulent whorls of water, the watchful apsect of the little turtle at the edge of the “pond.” I pull it out and heft it in my hand every now and then, for inspiration.viagra approved ‘popup’, sildenafil ‘width=500, stomach height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A floating police drone, a starship’s afterburner, a planet-crushing thermonuclear device that fits into a pocket, a digital key to the wealth of worlds. A transparent neoprene ball vacuformed around a simple 2-LED blink-repeater circuit and drilled through with a couple dozen very precise holes. It ignites at a single bounce, winking away with the universal red-blue semaphore of fate, the seizure-inducing blinking spasm that every drunk dreads, the visual shriek that puts him a simple breathalyzer test away from lost-license loss of independence, or serves as prelude to a chase. Who knew that if you focused on it and opened your shutter for a few extra seconds, it would take on a lurid, poetic beauty. Five bucks at Disneyland.recipe ‘popup’, web ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a refugee from my wife’s jewelry box, the surviving member of a sundered pair. Its mate is gone – perhaps escaped back to a sea of black velvet to drift over formations of garnet and hammered brass, hunting for tiny glass shrimp. Hand-snipped tin segments are wired together in a flexible facscimile of swimming scales, the eyes tiny red beads held on by pins.more about ‘popup’, medicine ‘width=500, height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in life, you developed the habit of taking notes. Not in college, where your first-week-of-the-semester verbatim transcription of your professors’ every little pearl devolved quickly into random doodles and daydreamt screenplay ideas. Not in the frenzied scrawling of deadline reporting that led to squint-eyed panic back at your computer once you realized you had no idea what that guy really said to you. Not in the shopping lists, camping manifests, tech-support phone calls or the dark haze of a bar before a pair of pretty eyes. No, somewhere much longer ago, you decided to keep track. There were loose-leaf binders, spiral-ring cheapos, perfect-bound sketchbooks. And then there were the handful of “important” notebooks, the ones you meant for the stashing of deep and revelatory notions, the recordable moments of ringing clarity. This one, this would be the last notebook you’d ever own: Gilt-edged pages, leatherette-bound between two heavy slabs of burnished copper. You wound up jotting down business plans, fiction-ideas. You used it to host head-clearing brawls, to help thresh nutrition from a skullful of mental chaff. It served as a paperweight for a year or two while you hunkered down on a particularly deep and engaging project. It has an eternal, rock-of-ages feel to it – and picking it up invariably triggers an attack of impostor syndrome. You think about pouring vinegar on the covers, just to see if it will corrode.case ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Hematite is the perfect heavy little substance. It’s not as heavy, expensive or hard to shape as iridium. Nor is it pure. Just common iron oxide, solid, dark and – when polished right – lustrous as a field of stars. Somewhere in my effects is a little blob of milled hematite, a worry stone the size of my thumb. Until I find it, here is a string of hematite pearls from my wife’s bead box. They are cold, and holding them, I could almost fall asleep.approved ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>A symbolic oxymoron, the log made out of plastic. Blowformed in un-lifelike brown, the mold marks show a careless inattention to proportions – one half’s longer than the other – and to details – the whole thing looks like a knotty Tootsie Roll more than anything that once swayed in the breeze. But it is unapologetically what it is: A log, stout and true. Sing along with me if you can remember the words:

recipe ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The rims would have been steel, perhaps, or brass, and fit uncomfortably at the temples and the nose. The lenses would have been wavy, heavy, thick and, worst of all, scratched, if for no other reason than because the case was made of wood. It was elegant in its time, rimmed in brass and protected by a carapace of cellulose tinted a rather miraculous sea-foam green. He would have put them on, squinted a bit, then taken them off to rub them on his inkstained tunic before putting them on again and beginning his work – a dip to the inkwell, a few strokes to the page, one word at a time in the exact order in which they would have to remain. Paper was expensive, and he was poor, with very much to write, for his master was a man of many words. It is Chinese. It may be more than 100 years old. LIght glows from its thousands of tiny, iridescent pools.approved ‘popup’, pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Object 200. Milestone. Millstone. This number means everything, and nothing – a way of quantifying this trivial obsession, or giving it weight it doesn’t deserve. The endless procession of things past the lens since I began now completely clutters my desk. This little fellow seems ready for anything. In honor of having done this 200 nights in a row (sort of) I’m parking him with #148 and #7, and an object still unobjectified. Visitors are invited to name him, and the bestower of the best name gets to keep him. Have fun. I do.decease ‘popup’, approved ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a facsimile of a thing of honor. Being not of the culture, but in the country, I had this traditional stone seal for imprinting my name made at a Hong Kong shop. The chop signifies dignity and integrity to those who use it correctly and understand its worth. For me, it was like bellying up to a foreign bar and ordering an exotic cocktail, a concrete totem that might bring me a millimetre closer to being Chinese. I’m often accused of tragic naievete. For all I know, the little carven lion imprints the word “western monkey’s ass” onto the documents I choose. So far, I’ve chosen only amateurish brush-and-ink paintings, where the sticky red ink of the chop-glyph adds contrast and a soupcon of authenticity.mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Tibet, Indonesia, India, Pakistan – points east. Silver is hammered, pierced, drawn and twisted, orbited with wire and augmented with tiny balls of solder to the point where – alone – it hums with the import of an alien craft. Strung together with others, it loses all significance, retaining just the dull luster of metal of minor worth. Each of these is individual, handcrafted, worthy of admiration on its own. One of a series collected in a box.side effects ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The 50s-retro-chic flavor skein floating through the 80s oozed from many media. Sci-fi costume jewelry included. Television’s rabbit-eared, 1:66 Cyclopean eye follows you around the room from atop a doll’s body in an explosion of gears. The chunk of holographic plastic is filed and buffed along the edges, complementing the Googie-trapezoidal shape and aesthetic. It’s got that rainbow sheen. A gift. I have no more knowledge about it.see ‘popup’, click ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The Museum of Modern Art Store is a glittering beach of industrial design where seaglass gems pile up, exquisite of design and function. A stroboscopic hazard flasher bought there just across from the museum a decade ago served a good 9 years, keeping Kenworths from eating me and my bike in the predawn murk. One drop too many, and it failed, finally. I kept the lenses. Seriously, spend some time at the store, it is the last repository of mass-produced modernist good taste in the U.S.purchase ‘popup’, treatment ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Vacation. A return to the old family sod in Connecticut, to that magic last hour of lush August sun and before autumn’s alarming kaleidoscope of decay cools it to a brown land of mud and slush. We are staying with my parents in the big, old clapboard house where I grew up, its interior festooned with art and mirrors and a wealth of heavy little objects. I’ve captured some to show you over the next few weeks. Perhaps the heaviest, though certainly not the littlest is this bronze life-cast of Walt Whitman‘s hand. Taken on April 18, 1881, it was probably made first by covering the poet’s great right paw with plaster of Paris. The hollow impression would have been then filled with liquid wax to produce a wax positive of the hand, and then cast by one of several methods used to cast bronze, in an edition of 500 or so. My father acquired it in trade for, as he recalls, one of his paintings (though perhaps not this one) of Gertrude Stein. At just under a foot long – the outside size limit for heavy little objects – Mr. Whitman’s right hand weighs around 15 pounds. It is dense and cold, and wonderful to handle.information pills ‘popup’, treatment ‘width=500, what is ed height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>When I was 6 or 8 or 10, we used to travel to Long Island to visit family friends on Shelter Island. The flat green rush of trees and fields past our car window, beneath the unending blue field of cirrus and cumulus clouds formed the tranquil reaches of my personal geography, the promise of a beach or a sunset just beyond and out of reach. At some point, we drove past a field of squat, dusky green plants, and when I asked my dad what they were, he told me, potatoes. Little pain in the ass that I was, I averred, “potatoes don’t grow on Long Island,” a phrase that was then flung back in my face every single time I offered opinions on things about which I knew nothing – which was often. Potatoes do grow on Long Island. So do husk tomatoes. Sheathed in papery, bougainvillea-like envelopes, they are about half the size of grapes, and just as sweet.
I nodded to a few rows of potatoes the other morning, en route to the little painted-plywood farm stand there a few salty miles from the ferry slip where these were bought.

salesickness ‘popup’, deceaseand ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This double-glass-block icon is meant to remind you of this – an elaborate ice castle lit from within. It glows with a liquid intensity, the frosted bulb cavity diffusing all 25 watts of its little bulb through about two pounds of solid glass. It would make a dandy blunt instrument – coldcock your prey, then fling it to a concrete floor to shatter into a million unfingerprintable bits. Designed by Harri Koskinen for the Museum of Modern Art, this was a gift, so I was pretty startled just now to learn how much it costs. The design concept itself screams “kitsch!” – until you switch it on. Then all hard feelings melt away. Oooh, says some small voice from somewhere south of my adolescence. It’s prettyvisit ‘popup’, link ‘width=500, cheap height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This is what the atomic Zippo evolved into: Fast times demand fast tools. Many tools of the 50s and 60s owe their visual speed to Raymond Loewy. The godfather of modern American industrial design and friend of Sinatra believed in the aesthetic of MAYA – Most Avanced Yet Acceptable, which drove his visions for everything from the Studebaker Hawk and the Lucky Strike logo to the interior of Skylab. No record of whether he’s directly responsible for the Ronson Varaflame Adonis, but in the Loewy way, the fuel-plug tail cowling and speed lines on this little chromed vehicle form their own slipstream just standing on my desk. It’s a flea-markeet find, probably among the first of the new butane-fueled models to come out in the late 50s. I’m hoping to find a junker for parts on eBay so I can replace the lost flint plug and get it fired up for camping trips and the occasional cigar. Meantime, here’s a fairly exhaustive history of Ronson lighters.what is ed ‘popup’, about it ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>It’s drop-forged potmetal, about as heavy as six or seven quarters. But its iconography doesn’t jibe with its milieu – symbol of love cast in the chosen medium of auto emblems, and chromed to a high shine. Some nagging tickle at the back of my head says “Dodge Dart Swinger” but Google is no help in addressing the hunch and neither is eBay. Hard nicks and gouges attest to its recent history of abuse – the blackout time it spent between life on its car and life on my lawn, where my son picked it up and handed it to me. “Here,” he said, in that way of his, “This is for you.”pill ‘popup’, pilule ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Like French provincial or Aztec modern, brutish industrial design is its own beast, not a blend of given sets of style but a strict, hermetic discipline unto itself. To make something wilfully, truly ugly – and yet appealing – is to create raw beauty, the unabashed individuality of things that are not only oblivious of their appearance, but apathetic about it. This Taiwanese ripoff of a $125 design doesn’t even bother with a crude approximation. It steals the basic core setup and a single styling cue (the useless hexagonal barrel points) and crams them together into the single most graceless, fugly package possible, wrapped in a (badly) anodized aluminum finish closely approximating the color of monkey diarrhea. It’s unbelievably bright (eight LEDs!), and puts the other white LED device on HLO to shame for both heaviness and size-to-power ratio. Ten bucks at my favorite vendor – the Chinese tool merchant at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. It’s the VW Thing of flashlights, the Pontiac Aztek, the sort of thing Judge Dredd would duct-tape to his truncheon. Even the circular rubber switchbutton on the butt is ugly.viagra approved ‘popup’, viagra order ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>How curious that we require our gods to be portable. For some, gods can’t be so great that they intimidate, nor so formidable that they can’t be compressed, miniaturized, made chibi and thus toted around as totem or proof of faith. This came from the stall of a far-East trader, whose wares ran from ornate meditation bells and elaborately carved wooden boxes to huge-phallused monkey talismans of bone, and captive Buddhas. The Buddha himself is carved in copper or some baser metal, weathered with what looks like lime or lye, and then encased in a chromed, red-lined glass box, proof against the weather and the world’s wickedness. While I am not Buddhist, he has been riding with me this week in case of the faintest whiff of sudden enlightenment.view ‘popup’, order ‘width=500, malady height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Your outlook on life governs your reaction to kaleidoscopes: It’s just a kid’s toy, you snort. No, you gush, it’s an entheogenic viewer for cleansing the mind’s eye, an acid-tripper’s kit-bag accessory, an artistic medium. Aaahh, it’s just a waste of materials. I’ve been in a few of those camps, but never in the last of them. Putting a new kaleidoscope to your eye sucks you into a quiet bubble that no one else shares, sending you on a tiny expedition: how many mirrors does it have? What little colored particles and knicknacks are rolling around up in the business end? Does the outside view factor into the inner visual vortex? What happens when I point it at this lamp, that TV, the sun? Kaleidoscopes have been around since 1816. They have inspired digital imitation, prompted navel-gazing obsession, and figured into countless business metaphors. This one is sturdy, made of lithographed tin, carefully rolled and crimped and packed with glass mirrors and colored beads in China. It’s sturdy little piece of work.viagra buy ‘popup’, viagra sale ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>At some point, toys became all about accessories. Kids shoulder past your knees at KayBee to hunch over demonic action figures – “What weapons does it have?” There are more than a dozen kinds of Batman. Barbie has always been accessorized. You’d think someone who owns a mobile home and a jet plane wouldn’t have to save her pennies, but then, she does work in a convenience store. Perhaps this little porcine keg – and an unswerving sense of thrift – brought her all that wealth. Perhaps she’s just a grown-up little girl whose anatomy is now obsessed over by toy fetishists, and whose original, sweet identity has been co-opted by the planet-wide hive mind of little girls yearning to be sophisticated, successful grown-ups.discount ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The technological revolution ain’t what it used to be, no sir. Time was, you didn’t know what a part was and installed it wrong, an industrial machine could macerate your hand, rip out your hair, suck your cravat in right up to your sideburns. You put the wrong part on, why, could lose a nose, an eye, an arm. Yessir, you wouldn’t want to dally ’round gettin’ your fingers greasy without readin’ the manual first, making sure you knew where everything went, and what it did, and what would happen if it broke. Not like nowadays, where it’s all code and passwords and glowing words that hurt your eyes, and it’s guesswork and you can never tell if the people sendin’ ya letters about your house or your apothecary order or the size of your tallywhacker is even men or women. You never have to get your hands dirty, or even move, much. It’s all guesswork and hoodoo and a buncha black magic, I tell ya, and I don’t pretend to understand none of it.

But this here little gizmo, I know this has gotta be for some kinda big sewing machine, right? It’s cast steel, with a v-shaped channel cut into it big enough for thread, and some sort of eyelet whatsis screwed into it. And there’s a sharp end, and a blunt end. Oughta be able to figger it out, oughtn’t I? Right? Say, what’n hell is this doohickey, anyways?stomach ‘popup’, viagra ‘width=500, information pills height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>I believe there is a continuation of the three classifications that make up the first query in a game of 20 Questions. Animal, vegetable and mineral are followed by mechanical, chemical, electrical, digital and, ultimately – if it really all is some bottomless vortex of a Darwinian end game and we each will return to dust – spiritual. There’s an unrealized artwork in my head centering around the nexus of these seven factors and the four traditional elements – earth, wind, fire, water – maybe some sort of periodic table for existence, maybe a deck of cards with suits and faces and long, wickedly complex games with too many rules to argue over. Maybe just a bad haiku. And maybe this New Periodic Table’s really about physical compounds: Where do Persian carpets fall on the chart compared with, say, hockey pucks? Schnauzers versus beveled -glass, walnut-paneled doors? Somewhere up among the noble compounds – the ones the world was made of before somebody discovered plastic and ruined it all – lie paper, glass and steel. Some rather large pharmaceutical company packed a little coil of dental floss (a slightly less noble, mid-table compound on the order of, say, cheddar cheese or wallets – into a glass capsule lined with a label and capped with a little cutter lid of stamped tin. They sold millions of ’em. And one made its way to a swap meet because you can’t just waltz into a store and buy ’em any longer.remedy ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in Bombay, a cargo container awaits, baking in the sun on a dock smeared with pelican shit. Inside are approximately 10,000 cheaply made, shiny, heavy little objects of a strange design. They were knocked out by sweatshops in Old Delhi or the poorer rural villages in Northern India for a few rupees apiece, sold by the sweatshop operators to exporters for a few hundred rupees more and then stuffed into this container for a long ocean voyage. Soon, they will make their way to Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Sydney and the Port of Los Angeles. The exporter will take a wire transfer of a rather large sum of money (for him, a 400 or 500% markup) from an importer here. The importer will then sell to the buyers at Urban Outfitters or some other yuppie-decor chain. And paunchy, galumphing fools like me will stumble in on a late-night window-shopping binge, mutter, “Whoa, cooool” and shell out enough money for each of them to feed a family of four in rural India for a month. Then we’ll take them home, park them on our desks, play with them for a few weeks while procrastinating from work that must be done, and then abandon them to gather dust and shame.more about ‘popup’, sickness ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Lampblack and glue, pressed into hard sticks, must be ground against a smooth stone with water to make ink. I think this page was more eloquent than I would ever hope to on the subject:

The inkstone, which was used to grind the ink, was considered the very soul of a scholars library.¢Ó These stones were selected with the greatest of care and were often decorated with elaborate symbols or literary phrases thought to encourage the scholars production of higher sentiments.¢Ó While there are many exceptions, most inkstones are rectangular or rounded.¢Ó Most are in fact made of stone but examples of pottery also exist.¢Ó The definitive work on this subject is probably Mi Fus Yen shih or Account of Inkstones.¢Ó This work gives the proper name for all portions of the Inkstone and sets out the various characteristics of Inkstones and their use.¢Ó Later but also fascinating works on Inkstones include the Yen lin or Forest of Inkstones by Yu Huai, which was written in the 1600s.¢Ó This was followed by¢Ó Pao yen tang yen pien or Discussion of Inkstones from the Hall of Treasured Inkstones by Ho Chuan-yao and Tuan his yen shih or Account of Tuan His Stones by Wu Lan-hsui, both of which were published in the 1830s.

Inkstones are an acquired taste like several other facets of Chinese culture.¢Ó They are generally black or dark in color and do not draw the attention of the eye.¢Ó Their beauty oftentimes is not so much in how they look but in how they work together with the ink and the paper and brush to achieve a particular color or texture.¢Ó However, for those fortunate enough to have learned to master the brush, ink, inkstone and paper, the four precious things of the library are a passion.¢Ó Holding an antique inkstone, it is hard not to feel the power that emanated from the previous painter or scholar who possessed this stone.¢Ó For this reason, inkstones are avidly collected and treasured by Chinese and some foreigners.¢Ó Prices vary greatly and are often based on stories as to prior owners, which are difficult if not impossible to verify.¢Ó

I bought this for a few yuan on our honeymoon in Beijing more than 10 years ago. I experimented with a set of traditional rabbit’s fur brushes for a little while, then stored it until recently. Its grinding surface is marred where some careless shopkeeper stuck an adhesive price tag to it long before it came to my possession, but it in no way detracts from the turbulent whorls of water, the watchful apsect of the little turtle at the edge of the “pond.” I pull it out and heft it in my hand every now and then, for inspiration.viagra approved ‘popup’, sildenafil ‘width=500, stomach height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A floating police drone, a starship’s afterburner, a planet-crushing thermonuclear device that fits into a pocket, a digital key to the wealth of worlds. A transparent neoprene ball vacuformed around a simple 2-LED blink-repeater circuit and drilled through with a couple dozen very precise holes. It ignites at a single bounce, winking away with the universal red-blue semaphore of fate, the seizure-inducing blinking spasm that every drunk dreads, the visual shriek that puts him a simple breathalyzer test away from lost-license loss of independence, or serves as prelude to a chase. Who knew that if you focused on it and opened your shutter for a few extra seconds, it would take on a lurid, poetic beauty. Five bucks at Disneyland.recipe ‘popup’, web ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a refugee from my wife’s jewelry box, the surviving member of a sundered pair. Its mate is gone – perhaps escaped back to a sea of black velvet to drift over formations of garnet and hammered brass, hunting for tiny glass shrimp. Hand-snipped tin segments are wired together in a flexible facscimile of swimming scales, the eyes tiny red beads held on by pins.more about ‘popup’, medicine ‘width=500, height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in life, you developed the habit of taking notes. Not in college, where your first-week-of-the-semester verbatim transcription of your professors’ every little pearl devolved quickly into random doodles and daydreamt screenplay ideas. Not in the frenzied scrawling of deadline reporting that led to squint-eyed panic back at your computer once you realized you had no idea what that guy really said to you. Not in the shopping lists, camping manifests, tech-support phone calls or the dark haze of a bar before a pair of pretty eyes. No, somewhere much longer ago, you decided to keep track. There were loose-leaf binders, spiral-ring cheapos, perfect-bound sketchbooks. And then there were the handful of “important” notebooks, the ones you meant for the stashing of deep and revelatory notions, the recordable moments of ringing clarity. This one, this would be the last notebook you’d ever own: Gilt-edged pages, leatherette-bound between two heavy slabs of burnished copper. You wound up jotting down business plans, fiction-ideas. You used it to host head-clearing brawls, to help thresh nutrition from a skullful of mental chaff. It served as a paperweight for a year or two while you hunkered down on a particularly deep and engaging project. It has an eternal, rock-of-ages feel to it – and picking it up invariably triggers an attack of impostor syndrome. You think about pouring vinegar on the covers, just to see if it will corrode.case ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Hematite is the perfect heavy little substance. It’s not as heavy, expensive or hard to shape as iridium. Nor is it pure. Just common iron oxide, solid, dark and – when polished right – lustrous as a field of stars. Somewhere in my effects is a little blob of milled hematite, a worry stone the size of my thumb. Until I find it, here is a string of hematite pearls from my wife’s bead box. They are cold, and holding them, I could almost fall asleep.approved ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>A symbolic oxymoron, the log made out of plastic. Blowformed in un-lifelike brown, the mold marks show a careless inattention to proportions – one half’s longer than the other – and to details – the whole thing looks like a knotty Tootsie Roll more than anything that once swayed in the breeze. But it is unapologetically what it is: A log, stout and true. Sing along with me if you can remember the words:

recipe ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The rims would have been steel, perhaps, or brass, and fit uncomfortably at the temples and the nose. The lenses would have been wavy, heavy, thick and, worst of all, scratched, if for no other reason than because the case was made of wood. It was elegant in its time, rimmed in brass and protected by a carapace of cellulose tinted a rather miraculous sea-foam green. He would have put them on, squinted a bit, then taken them off to rub them on his inkstained tunic before putting them on again and beginning his work – a dip to the inkwell, a few strokes to the page, one word at a time in the exact order in which they would have to remain. Paper was expensive, and he was poor, with very much to write, for his master was a man of many words. It is Chinese. It may be more than 100 years old. LIght glows from its thousands of tiny, iridescent pools.approved ‘popup’, pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Object 200. Milestone. Millstone. This number means everything, and nothing – a way of quantifying this trivial obsession, or giving it weight it doesn’t deserve. The endless procession of things past the lens since I began now completely clutters my desk. This little fellow seems ready for anything. In honor of having done this 200 nights in a row (sort of) I’m parking him with #148 and #7, and an object still unobjectified. Visitors are invited to name him, and the bestower of the best name gets to keep him. Have fun. I do.decease ‘popup’, approved ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a facsimile of a thing of honor. Being not of the culture, but in the country, I had this traditional stone seal for imprinting my name made at a Hong Kong shop. The chop signifies dignity and integrity to those who use it correctly and understand its worth. For me, it was like bellying up to a foreign bar and ordering an exotic cocktail, a concrete totem that might bring me a millimetre closer to being Chinese. I’m often accused of tragic naievete. For all I know, the little carven lion imprints the word “western monkey’s ass” onto the documents I choose. So far, I’ve chosen only amateurish brush-and-ink paintings, where the sticky red ink of the chop-glyph adds contrast and a soupcon of authenticity.mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Tibet, Indonesia, India, Pakistan – points east. Silver is hammered, pierced, drawn and twisted, orbited with wire and augmented with tiny balls of solder to the point where – alone – it hums with the import of an alien craft. Strung together with others, it loses all significance, retaining just the dull luster of metal of minor worth. Each of these is individual, handcrafted, worthy of admiration on its own. One of a series collected in a box.side effects ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The 50s-retro-chic flavor skein floating through the 80s oozed from many media. Sci-fi costume jewelry included. Television’s rabbit-eared, 1:66 Cyclopean eye follows you around the room from atop a doll’s body in an explosion of gears. The chunk of holographic plastic is filed and buffed along the edges, complementing the Googie-trapezoidal shape and aesthetic. It’s got that rainbow sheen. A gift. I have no more knowledge about it.see ‘popup’, click ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The Museum of Modern Art Store is a glittering beach of industrial design where seaglass gems pile up, exquisite of design and function. A stroboscopic hazard flasher bought there just across from the museum a decade ago served a good 9 years, keeping Kenworths from eating me and my bike in the predawn murk. One drop too many, and it failed, finally. I kept the lenses. Seriously, spend some time at the store, it is the last repository of mass-produced modernist good taste in the U.S.purchase ‘popup’, treatment ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Vacation. A return to the old family sod in Connecticut, to that magic last hour of lush August sun and before autumn’s alarming kaleidoscope of decay cools it to a brown land of mud and slush. We are staying with my parents in the big, old clapboard house where I grew up, its interior festooned with art and mirrors and a wealth of heavy little objects. I’ve captured some to show you over the next few weeks. Perhaps the heaviest, though certainly not the littlest is this bronze life-cast of Walt Whitman‘s hand. Taken on April 18, 1881, it was probably made first by covering the poet’s great right paw with plaster of Paris. The hollow impression would have been then filled with liquid wax to produce a wax positive of the hand, and then cast by one of several methods used to cast bronze, in an edition of 500 or so. My father acquired it in trade for, as he recalls, one of his paintings (though perhaps not this one) of Gertrude Stein. At just under a foot long – the outside size limit for heavy little objects – Mr. Whitman’s right hand weighs around 15 pounds. It is dense and cold, and wonderful to handle.

salesickness ‘popup’, deceaseand ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This double-glass-block icon is meant to remind you of this – an elaborate ice castle lit from within. It glows with a liquid intensity, the frosted bulb cavity diffusing all 25 watts of its little bulb through about two pounds of solid glass. It would make a dandy blunt instrument – coldcock your prey, then fling it to a concrete floor to shatter into a million unfingerprintable bits. Designed by Harri Koskinen for the Museum of Modern Art, this was a gift, so I was pretty startled just now to learn how much it costs. The design concept itself screams “kitsch!” – until you switch it on. Then all hard feelings melt away. Oooh, says some small voice from somewhere south of my adolescence. It’s prettyvisit ‘popup’, link ‘width=500, cheap height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This is what the atomic Zippo evolved into: Fast times demand fast tools. Many tools of the 50s and 60s owe their visual speed to Raymond Loewy. The godfather of modern American industrial design and friend of Sinatra believed in the aesthetic of MAYA – Most Avanced Yet Acceptable, which drove his visions for everything from the Studebaker Hawk and the Lucky Strike logo to the interior of Skylab. No record of whether he’s directly responsible for the Ronson Varaflame Adonis, but in the Loewy way, the fuel-plug tail cowling and speed lines on this little chromed vehicle form their own slipstream just standing on my desk. It’s a flea-markeet find, probably among the first of the new butane-fueled models to come out in the late 50s. I’m hoping to find a junker for parts on eBay so I can replace the lost flint plug and get it fired up for camping trips and the occasional cigar. Meantime, here’s a fairly exhaustive history of Ronson lighters.what is ed ‘popup’, about it ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>It’s drop-forged potmetal, about as heavy as six or seven quarters. But its iconography doesn’t jibe with its milieu – symbol of love cast in the chosen medium of auto emblems, and chromed to a high shine. Some nagging tickle at the back of my head says “Dodge Dart Swinger” but Google is no help in addressing the hunch and neither is eBay. Hard nicks and gouges attest to its recent history of abuse – the blackout time it spent between life on its car and life on my lawn, where my son picked it up and handed it to me. “Here,” he said, in that way of his, “This is for you.”pill ‘popup’, pilule ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Like French provincial or Aztec modern, brutish industrial design is its own beast, not a blend of given sets of style but a strict, hermetic discipline unto itself. To make something wilfully, truly ugly – and yet appealing – is to create raw beauty, the unabashed individuality of things that are not only oblivious of their appearance, but apathetic about it. This Taiwanese ripoff of a $125 design doesn’t even bother with a crude approximation. It steals the basic core setup and a single styling cue (the useless hexagonal barrel points) and crams them together into the single most graceless, fugly package possible, wrapped in a (badly) anodized aluminum finish closely approximating the color of monkey diarrhea. It’s unbelievably bright (eight LEDs!), and puts the other white LED device on HLO to shame for both heaviness and size-to-power ratio. Ten bucks at my favorite vendor – the Chinese tool merchant at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. It’s the VW Thing of flashlights, the Pontiac Aztek, the sort of thing Judge Dredd would duct-tape to his truncheon. Even the circular rubber switchbutton on the butt is ugly.viagra approved ‘popup’, viagra order ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>How curious that we require our gods to be portable. For some, gods can’t be so great that they intimidate, nor so formidable that they can’t be compressed, miniaturized, made chibi and thus toted around as totem or proof of faith. This came from the stall of a far-East trader, whose wares ran from ornate meditation bells and elaborately carved wooden boxes to huge-phallused monkey talismans of bone, and captive Buddhas. The Buddha himself is carved in copper or some baser metal, weathered with what looks like lime or lye, and then encased in a chromed, red-lined glass box, proof against the weather and the world’s wickedness. While I am not Buddhist, he has been riding with me this week in case of the faintest whiff of sudden enlightenment.view ‘popup’, order ‘width=500, malady height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Your outlook on life governs your reaction to kaleidoscopes: It’s just a kid’s toy, you snort. No, you gush, it’s an entheogenic viewer for cleansing the mind’s eye, an acid-tripper’s kit-bag accessory, an artistic medium. Aaahh, it’s just a waste of materials. I’ve been in a few of those camps, but never in the last of them. Putting a new kaleidoscope to your eye sucks you into a quiet bubble that no one else shares, sending you on a tiny expedition: how many mirrors does it have? What little colored particles and knicknacks are rolling around up in the business end? Does the outside view factor into the inner visual vortex? What happens when I point it at this lamp, that TV, the sun? Kaleidoscopes have been around since 1816. They have inspired digital imitation, prompted navel-gazing obsession, and figured into countless business metaphors. This one is sturdy, made of lithographed tin, carefully rolled and crimped and packed with glass mirrors and colored beads in China. It’s sturdy little piece of work.viagra buy ‘popup’, viagra sale ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>At some point, toys became all about accessories. Kids shoulder past your knees at KayBee to hunch over demonic action figures – “What weapons does it have?” There are more than a dozen kinds of Batman. Barbie has always been accessorized. You’d think someone who owns a mobile home and a jet plane wouldn’t have to save her pennies, but then, she does work in a convenience store. Perhaps this little porcine keg – and an unswerving sense of thrift – brought her all that wealth. Perhaps she’s just a grown-up little girl whose anatomy is now obsessed over by toy fetishists, and whose original, sweet identity has been co-opted by the planet-wide hive mind of little girls yearning to be sophisticated, successful grown-ups.discount ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The technological revolution ain’t what it used to be, no sir. Time was, you didn’t know what a part was and installed it wrong, an industrial machine could macerate your hand, rip out your hair, suck your cravat in right up to your sideburns. You put the wrong part on, why, could lose a nose, an eye, an arm. Yessir, you wouldn’t want to dally ’round gettin’ your fingers greasy without readin’ the manual first, making sure you knew where everything went, and what it did, and what would happen if it broke. Not like nowadays, where it’s all code and passwords and glowing words that hurt your eyes, and it’s guesswork and you can never tell if the people sendin’ ya letters about your house or your apothecary order or the size of your tallywhacker is even men or women. You never have to get your hands dirty, or even move, much. It’s all guesswork and hoodoo and a buncha black magic, I tell ya, and I don’t pretend to understand none of it.

But this here little gizmo, I know this has gotta be for some kinda big sewing machine, right? It’s cast steel, with a v-shaped channel cut into it big enough for thread, and some sort of eyelet whatsis screwed into it. And there’s a sharp end, and a blunt end. Oughta be able to figger it out, oughtn’t I? Right? Say, what’n hell is this doohickey, anyways?stomach ‘popup’, viagra ‘width=500, information pills height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>I believe there is a continuation of the three classifications that make up the first query in a game of 20 Questions. Animal, vegetable and mineral are followed by mechanical, chemical, electrical, digital and, ultimately – if it really all is some bottomless vortex of a Darwinian end game and we each will return to dust – spiritual. There’s an unrealized artwork in my head centering around the nexus of these seven factors and the four traditional elements – earth, wind, fire, water – maybe some sort of periodic table for existence, maybe a deck of cards with suits and faces and long, wickedly complex games with too many rules to argue over. Maybe just a bad haiku. And maybe this New Periodic Table’s really about physical compounds: Where do Persian carpets fall on the chart compared with, say, hockey pucks? Schnauzers versus beveled -glass, walnut-paneled doors? Somewhere up among the noble compounds – the ones the world was made of before somebody discovered plastic and ruined it all – lie paper, glass and steel. Some rather large pharmaceutical company packed a little coil of dental floss (a slightly less noble, mid-table compound on the order of, say, cheddar cheese or wallets – into a glass capsule lined with a label and capped with a little cutter lid of stamped tin. They sold millions of ’em. And one made its way to a swap meet because you can’t just waltz into a store and buy ’em any longer.remedy ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in Bombay, a cargo container awaits, baking in the sun on a dock smeared with pelican shit. Inside are approximately 10,000 cheaply made, shiny, heavy little objects of a strange design. They were knocked out by sweatshops in Old Delhi or the poorer rural villages in Northern India for a few rupees apiece, sold by the sweatshop operators to exporters for a few hundred rupees more and then stuffed into this container for a long ocean voyage. Soon, they will make their way to Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Sydney and the Port of Los Angeles. The exporter will take a wire transfer of a rather large sum of money (for him, a 400 or 500% markup) from an importer here. The importer will then sell to the buyers at Urban Outfitters or some other yuppie-decor chain. And paunchy, galumphing fools like me will stumble in on a late-night window-shopping binge, mutter, “Whoa, cooool” and shell out enough money for each of them to feed a family of four in rural India for a month. Then we’ll take them home, park them on our desks, play with them for a few weeks while procrastinating from work that must be done, and then abandon them to gather dust and shame.more about ‘popup’, sickness ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Lampblack and glue, pressed into hard sticks, must be ground against a smooth stone with water to make ink. I think this page was more eloquent than I would ever hope to on the subject:

The inkstone, which was used to grind the ink, was considered the very soul of a scholars library.¢Ó These stones were selected with the greatest of care and were often decorated with elaborate symbols or literary phrases thought to encourage the scholars production of higher sentiments.¢Ó While there are many exceptions, most inkstones are rectangular or rounded.¢Ó Most are in fact made of stone but examples of pottery also exist.¢Ó The definitive work on this subject is probably Mi Fus Yen shih or Account of Inkstones.¢Ó This work gives the proper name for all portions of the Inkstone and sets out the various characteristics of Inkstones and their use.¢Ó Later but also fascinating works on Inkstones include the Yen lin or Forest of Inkstones by Yu Huai, which was written in the 1600s.¢Ó This was followed by¢Ó Pao yen tang yen pien or Discussion of Inkstones from the Hall of Treasured Inkstones by Ho Chuan-yao and Tuan his yen shih or Account of Tuan His Stones by Wu Lan-hsui, both of which were published in the 1830s.

Inkstones are an acquired taste like several other facets of Chinese culture.¢Ó They are generally black or dark in color and do not draw the attention of the eye.¢Ó Their beauty oftentimes is not so much in how they look but in how they work together with the ink and the paper and brush to achieve a particular color or texture.¢Ó However, for those fortunate enough to have learned to master the brush, ink, inkstone and paper, the four precious things of the library are a passion.¢Ó Holding an antique inkstone, it is hard not to feel the power that emanated from the previous painter or scholar who possessed this stone.¢Ó For this reason, inkstones are avidly collected and treasured by Chinese and some foreigners.¢Ó Prices vary greatly and are often based on stories as to prior owners, which are difficult if not impossible to verify.¢Ó

I bought this for a few yuan on our honeymoon in Beijing more than 10 years ago. I experimented with a set of traditional rabbit’s fur brushes for a little while, then stored it until recently. Its grinding surface is marred where some careless shopkeeper stuck an adhesive price tag to it long before it came to my possession, but it in no way detracts from the turbulent whorls of water, the watchful apsect of the little turtle at the edge of the “pond.” I pull it out and heft it in my hand every now and then, for inspiration.viagra approved ‘popup’, sildenafil ‘width=500, stomach height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A floating police drone, a starship’s afterburner, a planet-crushing thermonuclear device that fits into a pocket, a digital key to the wealth of worlds. A transparent neoprene ball vacuformed around a simple 2-LED blink-repeater circuit and drilled through with a couple dozen very precise holes. It ignites at a single bounce, winking away with the universal red-blue semaphore of fate, the seizure-inducing blinking spasm that every drunk dreads, the visual shriek that puts him a simple breathalyzer test away from lost-license loss of independence, or serves as prelude to a chase. Who knew that if you focused on it and opened your shutter for a few extra seconds, it would take on a lurid, poetic beauty. Five bucks at Disneyland.recipe ‘popup’, web ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a refugee from my wife’s jewelry box, the surviving member of a sundered pair. Its mate is gone – perhaps escaped back to a sea of black velvet to drift over formations of garnet and hammered brass, hunting for tiny glass shrimp. Hand-snipped tin segments are wired together in a flexible facscimile of swimming scales, the eyes tiny red beads held on by pins.more about ‘popup’, medicine ‘width=500, height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in life, you developed the habit of taking notes. Not in college, where your first-week-of-the-semester verbatim transcription of your professors’ every little pearl devolved quickly into random doodles and daydreamt screenplay ideas. Not in the frenzied scrawling of deadline reporting that led to squint-eyed panic back at your computer once you realized you had no idea what that guy really said to you. Not in the shopping lists, camping manifests, tech-support phone calls or the dark haze of a bar before a pair of pretty eyes. No, somewhere much longer ago, you decided to keep track. There were loose-leaf binders, spiral-ring cheapos, perfect-bound sketchbooks. And then there were the handful of “important” notebooks, the ones you meant for the stashing of deep and revelatory notions, the recordable moments of ringing clarity. This one, this would be the last notebook you’d ever own: Gilt-edged pages, leatherette-bound between two heavy slabs of burnished copper. You wound up jotting down business plans, fiction-ideas. You used it to host head-clearing brawls, to help thresh nutrition from a skullful of mental chaff. It served as a paperweight for a year or two while you hunkered down on a particularly deep and engaging project. It has an eternal, rock-of-ages feel to it – and picking it up invariably triggers an attack of impostor syndrome. You think about pouring vinegar on the covers, just to see if it will corrode.case ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Hematite is the perfect heavy little substance. It’s not as heavy, expensive or hard to shape as iridium. Nor is it pure. Just common iron oxide, solid, dark and – when polished right – lustrous as a field of stars. Somewhere in my effects is a little blob of milled hematite, a worry stone the size of my thumb. Until I find it, here is a string of hematite pearls from my wife’s bead box. They are cold, and holding them, I could almost fall asleep.approved ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>A symbolic oxymoron, the log made out of plastic. Blowformed in un-lifelike brown, the mold marks show a careless inattention to proportions – one half’s longer than the other – and to details – the whole thing looks like a knotty Tootsie Roll more than anything that once swayed in the breeze. But it is unapologetically what it is: A log, stout and true. Sing along with me if you can remember the words:

recipe ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The rims would have been steel, perhaps, or brass, and fit uncomfortably at the temples and the nose. The lenses would have been wavy, heavy, thick and, worst of all, scratched, if for no other reason than because the case was made of wood. It was elegant in its time, rimmed in brass and protected by a carapace of cellulose tinted a rather miraculous sea-foam green. He would have put them on, squinted a bit, then taken them off to rub them on his inkstained tunic before putting them on again and beginning his work – a dip to the inkwell, a few strokes to the page, one word at a time in the exact order in which they would have to remain. Paper was expensive, and he was poor, with very much to write, for his master was a man of many words. It is Chinese. It may be more than 100 years old. LIght glows from its thousands of tiny, iridescent pools.approved ‘popup’, pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Object 200. Milestone. Millstone. This number means everything, and nothing – a way of quantifying this trivial obsession, or giving it weight it doesn’t deserve. The endless procession of things past the lens since I began now completely clutters my desk. This little fellow seems ready for anything. In honor of having done this 200 nights in a row (sort of) I’m parking him with #148 and #7, and an object still unobjectified. Visitors are invited to name him, and the bestower of the best name gets to keep him. Have fun. I do.decease ‘popup’, approved ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a facsimile of a thing of honor. Being not of the culture, but in the country, I had this traditional stone seal for imprinting my name made at a Hong Kong shop. The chop signifies dignity and integrity to those who use it correctly and understand its worth. For me, it was like bellying up to a foreign bar and ordering an exotic cocktail, a concrete totem that might bring me a millimetre closer to being Chinese. I’m often accused of tragic naievete. For all I know, the little carven lion imprints the word “western monkey’s ass” onto the documents I choose. So far, I’ve chosen only amateurish brush-and-ink paintings, where the sticky red ink of the chop-glyph adds contrast and a soupcon of authenticity.mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Tibet, Indonesia, India, Pakistan – points east. Silver is hammered, pierced, drawn and twisted, orbited with wire and augmented with tiny balls of solder to the point where – alone – it hums with the import of an alien craft. Strung together with others, it loses all significance, retaining just the dull luster of metal of minor worth. Each of these is individual, handcrafted, worthy of admiration on its own. One of a series collected in a box.side effects ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The 50s-retro-chic flavor skein floating through the 80s oozed from many media. Sci-fi costume jewelry included. Television’s rabbit-eared, 1:66 Cyclopean eye follows you around the room from atop a doll’s body in an explosion of gears. The chunk of holographic plastic is filed and buffed along the edges, complementing the Googie-trapezoidal shape and aesthetic. It’s got that rainbow sheen. A gift. I have no more knowledge about it.see ‘popup’, click ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The Museum of Modern Art Store is a glittering beach of industrial design where seaglass gems pile up, exquisite of design and function. A stroboscopic hazard flasher bought there just across from the museum a decade ago served a good 9 years, keeping Kenworths from eating me and my bike in the predawn murk. One drop too many, and it failed, finally. I kept the lenses. Seriously, spend some time at the store, it is the last repository of mass-produced modernist good taste in the U.S.

salesickness ‘popup’, deceaseand ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This double-glass-block icon is meant to remind you of this – an elaborate ice castle lit from within. It glows with a liquid intensity, the frosted bulb cavity diffusing all 25 watts of its little bulb through about two pounds of solid glass. It would make a dandy blunt instrument – coldcock your prey, then fling it to a concrete floor to shatter into a million unfingerprintable bits. Designed by Harri Koskinen for the Museum of Modern Art, this was a gift, so I was pretty startled just now to learn how much it costs. The design concept itself screams “kitsch!” – until you switch it on. Then all hard feelings melt away. Oooh, says some small voice from somewhere south of my adolescence. It’s prettyvisit ‘popup’, link ‘width=500, cheap height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This is what the atomic Zippo evolved into: Fast times demand fast tools. Many tools of the 50s and 60s owe their visual speed to Raymond Loewy. The godfather of modern American industrial design and friend of Sinatra believed in the aesthetic of MAYA – Most Avanced Yet Acceptable, which drove his visions for everything from the Studebaker Hawk and the Lucky Strike logo to the interior of Skylab. No record of whether he’s directly responsible for the Ronson Varaflame Adonis, but in the Loewy way, the fuel-plug tail cowling and speed lines on this little chromed vehicle form their own slipstream just standing on my desk. It’s a flea-markeet find, probably among the first of the new butane-fueled models to come out in the late 50s. I’m hoping to find a junker for parts on eBay so I can replace the lost flint plug and get it fired up for camping trips and the occasional cigar. Meantime, here’s a fairly exhaustive history of Ronson lighters.what is ed ‘popup’, about it ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>It’s drop-forged potmetal, about as heavy as six or seven quarters. But its iconography doesn’t jibe with its milieu – symbol of love cast in the chosen medium of auto emblems, and chromed to a high shine. Some nagging tickle at the back of my head says “Dodge Dart Swinger” but Google is no help in addressing the hunch and neither is eBay. Hard nicks and gouges attest to its recent history of abuse – the blackout time it spent between life on its car and life on my lawn, where my son picked it up and handed it to me. “Here,” he said, in that way of his, “This is for you.”pill ‘popup’, pilule ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Like French provincial or Aztec modern, brutish industrial design is its own beast, not a blend of given sets of style but a strict, hermetic discipline unto itself. To make something wilfully, truly ugly – and yet appealing – is to create raw beauty, the unabashed individuality of things that are not only oblivious of their appearance, but apathetic about it. This Taiwanese ripoff of a $125 design doesn’t even bother with a crude approximation. It steals the basic core setup and a single styling cue (the useless hexagonal barrel points) and crams them together into the single most graceless, fugly package possible, wrapped in a (badly) anodized aluminum finish closely approximating the color of monkey diarrhea. It’s unbelievably bright (eight LEDs!), and puts the other white LED device on HLO to shame for both heaviness and size-to-power ratio. Ten bucks at my favorite vendor – the Chinese tool merchant at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. It’s the VW Thing of flashlights, the Pontiac Aztek, the sort of thing Judge Dredd would duct-tape to his truncheon. Even the circular rubber switchbutton on the butt is ugly.viagra approved ‘popup’, viagra order ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>How curious that we require our gods to be portable. For some, gods can’t be so great that they intimidate, nor so formidable that they can’t be compressed, miniaturized, made chibi and thus toted around as totem or proof of faith. This came from the stall of a far-East trader, whose wares ran from ornate meditation bells and elaborately carved wooden boxes to huge-phallused monkey talismans of bone, and captive Buddhas. The Buddha himself is carved in copper or some baser metal, weathered with what looks like lime or lye, and then encased in a chromed, red-lined glass box, proof against the weather and the world’s wickedness. While I am not Buddhist, he has been riding with me this week in case of the faintest whiff of sudden enlightenment.view ‘popup’, order ‘width=500, malady height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Your outlook on life governs your reaction to kaleidoscopes: It’s just a kid’s toy, you snort. No, you gush, it’s an entheogenic viewer for cleansing the mind’s eye, an acid-tripper’s kit-bag accessory, an artistic medium. Aaahh, it’s just a waste of materials. I’ve been in a few of those camps, but never in the last of them. Putting a new kaleidoscope to your eye sucks you into a quiet bubble that no one else shares, sending you on a tiny expedition: how many mirrors does it have? What little colored particles and knicknacks are rolling around up in the business end? Does the outside view factor into the inner visual vortex? What happens when I point it at this lamp, that TV, the sun? Kaleidoscopes have been around since 1816. They have inspired digital imitation, prompted navel-gazing obsession, and figured into countless business metaphors. This one is sturdy, made of lithographed tin, carefully rolled and crimped and packed with glass mirrors and colored beads in China. It’s sturdy little piece of work.viagra buy ‘popup’, viagra sale ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>At some point, toys became all about accessories. Kids shoulder past your knees at KayBee to hunch over demonic action figures – “What weapons does it have?” There are more than a dozen kinds of Batman. Barbie has always been accessorized. You’d think someone who owns a mobile home and a jet plane wouldn’t have to save her pennies, but then, she does work in a convenience store. Perhaps this little porcine keg – and an unswerving sense of thrift – brought her all that wealth. Perhaps she’s just a grown-up little girl whose anatomy is now obsessed over by toy fetishists, and whose original, sweet identity has been co-opted by the planet-wide hive mind of little girls yearning to be sophisticated, successful grown-ups.discount ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The technological revolution ain’t what it used to be, no sir. Time was, you didn’t know what a part was and installed it wrong, an industrial machine could macerate your hand, rip out your hair, suck your cravat in right up to your sideburns. You put the wrong part on, why, could lose a nose, an eye, an arm. Yessir, you wouldn’t want to dally ’round gettin’ your fingers greasy without readin’ the manual first, making sure you knew where everything went, and what it did, and what would happen if it broke. Not like nowadays, where it’s all code and passwords and glowing words that hurt your eyes, and it’s guesswork and you can never tell if the people sendin’ ya letters about your house or your apothecary order or the size of your tallywhacker is even men or women. You never have to get your hands dirty, or even move, much. It’s all guesswork and hoodoo and a buncha black magic, I tell ya, and I don’t pretend to understand none of it.

But this here little gizmo, I know this has gotta be for some kinda big sewing machine, right? It’s cast steel, with a v-shaped channel cut into it big enough for thread, and some sort of eyelet whatsis screwed into it. And there’s a sharp end, and a blunt end. Oughta be able to figger it out, oughtn’t I? Right? Say, what’n hell is this doohickey, anyways?stomach ‘popup’, viagra ‘width=500, information pills height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>I believe there is a continuation of the three classifications that make up the first query in a game of 20 Questions. Animal, vegetable and mineral are followed by mechanical, chemical, electrical, digital and, ultimately – if it really all is some bottomless vortex of a Darwinian end game and we each will return to dust – spiritual. There’s an unrealized artwork in my head centering around the nexus of these seven factors and the four traditional elements – earth, wind, fire, water – maybe some sort of periodic table for existence, maybe a deck of cards with suits and faces and long, wickedly complex games with too many rules to argue over. Maybe just a bad haiku. And maybe this New Periodic Table’s really about physical compounds: Where do Persian carpets fall on the chart compared with, say, hockey pucks? Schnauzers versus beveled -glass, walnut-paneled doors? Somewhere up among the noble compounds – the ones the world was made of before somebody discovered plastic and ruined it all – lie paper, glass and steel. Some rather large pharmaceutical company packed a little coil of dental floss (a slightly less noble, mid-table compound on the order of, say, cheddar cheese or wallets – into a glass capsule lined with a label and capped with a little cutter lid of stamped tin. They sold millions of ’em. And one made its way to a swap meet because you can’t just waltz into a store and buy ’em any longer.remedy ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in Bombay, a cargo container awaits, baking in the sun on a dock smeared with pelican shit. Inside are approximately 10,000 cheaply made, shiny, heavy little objects of a strange design. They were knocked out by sweatshops in Old Delhi or the poorer rural villages in Northern India for a few rupees apiece, sold by the sweatshop operators to exporters for a few hundred rupees more and then stuffed into this container for a long ocean voyage. Soon, they will make their way to Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Sydney and the Port of Los Angeles. The exporter will take a wire transfer of a rather large sum of money (for him, a 400 or 500% markup) from an importer here. The importer will then sell to the buyers at Urban Outfitters or some other yuppie-decor chain. And paunchy, galumphing fools like me will stumble in on a late-night window-shopping binge, mutter, “Whoa, cooool” and shell out enough money for each of them to feed a family of four in rural India for a month. Then we’ll take them home, park them on our desks, play with them for a few weeks while procrastinating from work that must be done, and then abandon them to gather dust and shame.more about ‘popup’, sickness ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Lampblack and glue, pressed into hard sticks, must be ground against a smooth stone with water to make ink. I think this page was more eloquent than I would ever hope to on the subject:

The inkstone, which was used to grind the ink, was considered the very soul of a scholars library.¢Ó These stones were selected with the greatest of care and were often decorated with elaborate symbols or literary phrases thought to encourage the scholars production of higher sentiments.¢Ó While there are many exceptions, most inkstones are rectangular or rounded.¢Ó Most are in fact made of stone but examples of pottery also exist.¢Ó The definitive work on this subject is probably Mi Fus Yen shih or Account of Inkstones.¢Ó This work gives the proper name for all portions of the Inkstone and sets out the various characteristics of Inkstones and their use.¢Ó Later but also fascinating works on Inkstones include the Yen lin or Forest of Inkstones by Yu Huai, which was written in the 1600s.¢Ó This was followed by¢Ó Pao yen tang yen pien or Discussion of Inkstones from the Hall of Treasured Inkstones by Ho Chuan-yao and Tuan his yen shih or Account of Tuan His Stones by Wu Lan-hsui, both of which were published in the 1830s.

Inkstones are an acquired taste like several other facets of Chinese culture.¢Ó They are generally black or dark in color and do not draw the attention of the eye.¢Ó Their beauty oftentimes is not so much in how they look but in how they work together with the ink and the paper and brush to achieve a particular color or texture.¢Ó However, for those fortunate enough to have learned to master the brush, ink, inkstone and paper, the four precious things of the library are a passion.¢Ó Holding an antique inkstone, it is hard not to feel the power that emanated from the previous painter or scholar who possessed this stone.¢Ó For this reason, inkstones are avidly collected and treasured by Chinese and some foreigners.¢Ó Prices vary greatly and are often based on stories as to prior owners, which are difficult if not impossible to verify.¢Ó

I bought this for a few yuan on our honeymoon in Beijing more than 10 years ago. I experimented with a set of traditional rabbit’s fur brushes for a little while, then stored it until recently. Its grinding surface is marred where some careless shopkeeper stuck an adhesive price tag to it long before it came to my possession, but it in no way detracts from the turbulent whorls of water, the watchful apsect of the little turtle at the edge of the “pond.” I pull it out and heft it in my hand every now and then, for inspiration.viagra approved ‘popup’, sildenafil ‘width=500, stomach height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A floating police drone, a starship’s afterburner, a planet-crushing thermonuclear device that fits into a pocket, a digital key to the wealth of worlds. A transparent neoprene ball vacuformed around a simple 2-LED blink-repeater circuit and drilled through with a couple dozen very precise holes. It ignites at a single bounce, winking away with the universal red-blue semaphore of fate, the seizure-inducing blinking spasm that every drunk dreads, the visual shriek that puts him a simple breathalyzer test away from lost-license loss of independence, or serves as prelude to a chase. Who knew that if you focused on it and opened your shutter for a few extra seconds, it would take on a lurid, poetic beauty. Five bucks at Disneyland.recipe ‘popup’, web ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a refugee from my wife’s jewelry box, the surviving member of a sundered pair. Its mate is gone – perhaps escaped back to a sea of black velvet to drift over formations of garnet and hammered brass, hunting for tiny glass shrimp. Hand-snipped tin segments are wired together in a flexible facscimile of swimming scales, the eyes tiny red beads held on by pins.more about ‘popup’, medicine ‘width=500, height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in life, you developed the habit of taking notes. Not in college, where your first-week-of-the-semester verbatim transcription of your professors’ every little pearl devolved quickly into random doodles and daydreamt screenplay ideas. Not in the frenzied scrawling of deadline reporting that led to squint-eyed panic back at your computer once you realized you had no idea what that guy really said to you. Not in the shopping lists, camping manifests, tech-support phone calls or the dark haze of a bar before a pair of pretty eyes. No, somewhere much longer ago, you decided to keep track. There were loose-leaf binders, spiral-ring cheapos, perfect-bound sketchbooks. And then there were the handful of “important” notebooks, the ones you meant for the stashing of deep and revelatory notions, the recordable moments of ringing clarity. This one, this would be the last notebook you’d ever own: Gilt-edged pages, leatherette-bound between two heavy slabs of burnished copper. You wound up jotting down business plans, fiction-ideas. You used it to host head-clearing brawls, to help thresh nutrition from a skullful of mental chaff. It served as a paperweight for a year or two while you hunkered down on a particularly deep and engaging project. It has an eternal, rock-of-ages feel to it – and picking it up invariably triggers an attack of impostor syndrome. You think about pouring vinegar on the covers, just to see if it will corrode.case ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Hematite is the perfect heavy little substance. It’s not as heavy, expensive or hard to shape as iridium. Nor is it pure. Just common iron oxide, solid, dark and – when polished right – lustrous as a field of stars. Somewhere in my effects is a little blob of milled hematite, a worry stone the size of my thumb. Until I find it, here is a string of hematite pearls from my wife’s bead box. They are cold, and holding them, I could almost fall asleep.approved ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>A symbolic oxymoron, the log made out of plastic. Blowformed in un-lifelike brown, the mold marks show a careless inattention to proportions – one half’s longer than the other – and to details – the whole thing looks like a knotty Tootsie Roll more than anything that once swayed in the breeze. But it is unapologetically what it is: A log, stout and true. Sing along with me if you can remember the words:

recipe ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The rims would have been steel, perhaps, or brass, and fit uncomfortably at the temples and the nose. The lenses would have been wavy, heavy, thick and, worst of all, scratched, if for no other reason than because the case was made of wood. It was elegant in its time, rimmed in brass and protected by a carapace of cellulose tinted a rather miraculous sea-foam green. He would have put them on, squinted a bit, then taken them off to rub them on his inkstained tunic before putting them on again and beginning his work – a dip to the inkwell, a few strokes to the page, one word at a time in the exact order in which they would have to remain. Paper was expensive, and he was poor, with very much to write, for his master was a man of many words. It is Chinese. It may be more than 100 years old. LIght glows from its thousands of tiny, iridescent pools.approved ‘popup’, pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Object 200. Milestone. Millstone. This number means everything, and nothing – a way of quantifying this trivial obsession, or giving it weight it doesn’t deserve. The endless procession of things past the lens since I began now completely clutters my desk. This little fellow seems ready for anything. In honor of having done this 200 nights in a row (sort of) I’m parking him with #148 and #7, and an object still unobjectified. Visitors are invited to name him, and the bestower of the best name gets to keep him. Have fun. I do.decease ‘popup’, approved ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a facsimile of a thing of honor. Being not of the culture, but in the country, I had this traditional stone seal for imprinting my name made at a Hong Kong shop. The chop signifies dignity and integrity to those who use it correctly and understand its worth. For me, it was like bellying up to a foreign bar and ordering an exotic cocktail, a concrete totem that might bring me a millimetre closer to being Chinese. I’m often accused of tragic naievete. For all I know, the little carven lion imprints the word “western monkey’s ass” onto the documents I choose. So far, I’ve chosen only amateurish brush-and-ink paintings, where the sticky red ink of the chop-glyph adds contrast and a soupcon of authenticity.mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Tibet, Indonesia, India, Pakistan – points east. Silver is hammered, pierced, drawn and twisted, orbited with wire and augmented with tiny balls of solder to the point where – alone – it hums with the import of an alien craft. Strung together with others, it loses all significance, retaining just the dull luster of metal of minor worth. Each of these is individual, handcrafted, worthy of admiration on its own. One of a series collected in a box.side effects ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The 50s-retro-chic flavor skein floating through the 80s oozed from many media. Sci-fi costume jewelry included. Television’s rabbit-eared, 1:66 Cyclopean eye follows you around the room from atop a doll’s body in an explosion of gears. The chunk of holographic plastic is filed and buffed along the edges, complementing the Googie-trapezoidal shape and aesthetic. It’s got that rainbow sheen. A gift. I have no more knowledge about it.

salesickness ‘popup’, deceaseand ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This double-glass-block icon is meant to remind you of this – an elaborate ice castle lit from within. It glows with a liquid intensity, the frosted bulb cavity diffusing all 25 watts of its little bulb through about two pounds of solid glass. It would make a dandy blunt instrument – coldcock your prey, then fling it to a concrete floor to shatter into a million unfingerprintable bits. Designed by Harri Koskinen for the Museum of Modern Art, this was a gift, so I was pretty startled just now to learn how much it costs. The design concept itself screams “kitsch!” – until you switch it on. Then all hard feelings melt away. Oooh, says some small voice from somewhere south of my adolescence. It’s prettyvisit ‘popup’, link ‘width=500, cheap height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This is what the atomic Zippo evolved into: Fast times demand fast tools. Many tools of the 50s and 60s owe their visual speed to Raymond Loewy. The godfather of modern American industrial design and friend of Sinatra believed in the aesthetic of MAYA – Most Avanced Yet Acceptable, which drove his visions for everything from the Studebaker Hawk and the Lucky Strike logo to the interior of Skylab. No record of whether he’s directly responsible for the Ronson Varaflame Adonis, but in the Loewy way, the fuel-plug tail cowling and speed lines on this little chromed vehicle form their own slipstream just standing on my desk. It’s a flea-markeet find, probably among the first of the new butane-fueled models to come out in the late 50s. I’m hoping to find a junker for parts on eBay so I can replace the lost flint plug and get it fired up for camping trips and the occasional cigar. Meantime, here’s a fairly exhaustive history of Ronson lighters.what is ed ‘popup’, about it ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>It’s drop-forged potmetal, about as heavy as six or seven quarters. But its iconography doesn’t jibe with its milieu – symbol of love cast in the chosen medium of auto emblems, and chromed to a high shine. Some nagging tickle at the back of my head says “Dodge Dart Swinger” but Google is no help in addressing the hunch and neither is eBay. Hard nicks and gouges attest to its recent history of abuse – the blackout time it spent between life on its car and life on my lawn, where my son picked it up and handed it to me. “Here,” he said, in that way of his, “This is for you.”pill ‘popup’, pilule ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Like French provincial or Aztec modern, brutish industrial design is its own beast, not a blend of given sets of style but a strict, hermetic discipline unto itself. To make something wilfully, truly ugly – and yet appealing – is to create raw beauty, the unabashed individuality of things that are not only oblivious of their appearance, but apathetic about it. This Taiwanese ripoff of a $125 design doesn’t even bother with a crude approximation. It steals the basic core setup and a single styling cue (the useless hexagonal barrel points) and crams them together into the single most graceless, fugly package possible, wrapped in a (badly) anodized aluminum finish closely approximating the color of monkey diarrhea. It’s unbelievably bright (eight LEDs!), and puts the other white LED device on HLO to shame for both heaviness and size-to-power ratio. Ten bucks at my favorite vendor – the Chinese tool merchant at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. It’s the VW Thing of flashlights, the Pontiac Aztek, the sort of thing Judge Dredd would duct-tape to his truncheon. Even the circular rubber switchbutton on the butt is ugly.viagra approved ‘popup’, viagra order ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>How curious that we require our gods to be portable. For some, gods can’t be so great that they intimidate, nor so formidable that they can’t be compressed, miniaturized, made chibi and thus toted around as totem or proof of faith. This came from the stall of a far-East trader, whose wares ran from ornate meditation bells and elaborately carved wooden boxes to huge-phallused monkey talismans of bone, and captive Buddhas. The Buddha himself is carved in copper or some baser metal, weathered with what looks like lime or lye, and then encased in a chromed, red-lined glass box, proof against the weather and the world’s wickedness. While I am not Buddhist, he has been riding with me this week in case of the faintest whiff of sudden enlightenment.view ‘popup’, order ‘width=500, malady height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Your outlook on life governs your reaction to kaleidoscopes: It’s just a kid’s toy, you snort. No, you gush, it’s an entheogenic viewer for cleansing the mind’s eye, an acid-tripper’s kit-bag accessory, an artistic medium. Aaahh, it’s just a waste of materials. I’ve been in a few of those camps, but never in the last of them. Putting a new kaleidoscope to your eye sucks you into a quiet bubble that no one else shares, sending you on a tiny expedition: how many mirrors does it have? What little colored particles and knicknacks are rolling around up in the business end? Does the outside view factor into the inner visual vortex? What happens when I point it at this lamp, that TV, the sun? Kaleidoscopes have been around since 1816. They have inspired digital imitation, prompted navel-gazing obsession, and figured into countless business metaphors. This one is sturdy, made of lithographed tin, carefully rolled and crimped and packed with glass mirrors and colored beads in China. It’s sturdy little piece of work.viagra buy ‘popup’, viagra sale ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>At some point, toys became all about accessories. Kids shoulder past your knees at KayBee to hunch over demonic action figures – “What weapons does it have?” There are more than a dozen kinds of Batman. Barbie has always been accessorized. You’d think someone who owns a mobile home and a jet plane wouldn’t have to save her pennies, but then, she does work in a convenience store. Perhaps this little porcine keg – and an unswerving sense of thrift – brought her all that wealth. Perhaps she’s just a grown-up little girl whose anatomy is now obsessed over by toy fetishists, and whose original, sweet identity has been co-opted by the planet-wide hive mind of little girls yearning to be sophisticated, successful grown-ups.discount ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The technological revolution ain’t what it used to be, no sir. Time was, you didn’t know what a part was and installed it wrong, an industrial machine could macerate your hand, rip out your hair, suck your cravat in right up to your sideburns. You put the wrong part on, why, could lose a nose, an eye, an arm. Yessir, you wouldn’t want to dally ’round gettin’ your fingers greasy without readin’ the manual first, making sure you knew where everything went, and what it did, and what would happen if it broke. Not like nowadays, where it’s all code and passwords and glowing words that hurt your eyes, and it’s guesswork and you can never tell if the people sendin’ ya letters about your house or your apothecary order or the size of your tallywhacker is even men or women. You never have to get your hands dirty, or even move, much. It’s all guesswork and hoodoo and a buncha black magic, I tell ya, and I don’t pretend to understand none of it.

But this here little gizmo, I know this has gotta be for some kinda big sewing machine, right? It’s cast steel, with a v-shaped channel cut into it big enough for thread, and some sort of eyelet whatsis screwed into it. And there’s a sharp end, and a blunt end. Oughta be able to figger it out, oughtn’t I? Right? Say, what’n hell is this doohickey, anyways?stomach ‘popup’, viagra ‘width=500, information pills height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>I believe there is a continuation of the three classifications that make up the first query in a game of 20 Questions. Animal, vegetable and mineral are followed by mechanical, chemical, electrical, digital and, ultimately – if it really all is some bottomless vortex of a Darwinian end game and we each will return to dust – spiritual. There’s an unrealized artwork in my head centering around the nexus of these seven factors and the four traditional elements – earth, wind, fire, water – maybe some sort of periodic table for existence, maybe a deck of cards with suits and faces and long, wickedly complex games with too many rules to argue over. Maybe just a bad haiku. And maybe this New Periodic Table’s really about physical compounds: Where do Persian carpets fall on the chart compared with, say, hockey pucks? Schnauzers versus beveled -glass, walnut-paneled doors? Somewhere up among the noble compounds – the ones the world was made of before somebody discovered plastic and ruined it all – lie paper, glass and steel. Some rather large pharmaceutical company packed a little coil of dental floss (a slightly less noble, mid-table compound on the order of, say, cheddar cheese or wallets – into a glass capsule lined with a label and capped with a little cutter lid of stamped tin. They sold millions of ’em. And one made its way to a swap meet because you can’t just waltz into a store and buy ’em any longer.remedy ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in Bombay, a cargo container awaits, baking in the sun on a dock smeared with pelican shit. Inside are approximately 10,000 cheaply made, shiny, heavy little objects of a strange design. They were knocked out by sweatshops in Old Delhi or the poorer rural villages in Northern India for a few rupees apiece, sold by the sweatshop operators to exporters for a few hundred rupees more and then stuffed into this container for a long ocean voyage. Soon, they will make their way to Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Sydney and the Port of Los Angeles. The exporter will take a wire transfer of a rather large sum of money (for him, a 400 or 500% markup) from an importer here. The importer will then sell to the buyers at Urban Outfitters or some other yuppie-decor chain. And paunchy, galumphing fools like me will stumble in on a late-night window-shopping binge, mutter, “Whoa, cooool” and shell out enough money for each of them to feed a family of four in rural India for a month. Then we’ll take them home, park them on our desks, play with them for a few weeks while procrastinating from work that must be done, and then abandon them to gather dust and shame.more about ‘popup’, sickness ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Lampblack and glue, pressed into hard sticks, must be ground against a smooth stone with water to make ink. I think this page was more eloquent than I would ever hope to on the subject:

The inkstone, which was used to grind the ink, was considered the very soul of a scholars library.¢Ó These stones were selected with the greatest of care and were often decorated with elaborate symbols or literary phrases thought to encourage the scholars production of higher sentiments.¢Ó While there are many exceptions, most inkstones are rectangular or rounded.¢Ó Most are in fact made of stone but examples of pottery also exist.¢Ó The definitive work on this subject is probably Mi Fus Yen shih or Account of Inkstones.¢Ó This work gives the proper name for all portions of the Inkstone and sets out the various characteristics of Inkstones and their use.¢Ó Later but also fascinating works on Inkstones include the Yen lin or Forest of Inkstones by Yu Huai, which was written in the 1600s.¢Ó This was followed by¢Ó Pao yen tang yen pien or Discussion of Inkstones from the Hall of Treasured Inkstones by Ho Chuan-yao and Tuan his yen shih or Account of Tuan His Stones by Wu Lan-hsui, both of which were published in the 1830s.

Inkstones are an acquired taste like several other facets of Chinese culture.¢Ó They are generally black or dark in color and do not draw the attention of the eye.¢Ó Their beauty oftentimes is not so much in how they look but in how they work together with the ink and the paper and brush to achieve a particular color or texture.¢Ó However, for those fortunate enough to have learned to master the brush, ink, inkstone and paper, the four precious things of the library are a passion.¢Ó Holding an antique inkstone, it is hard not to feel the power that emanated from the previous painter or scholar who possessed this stone.¢Ó For this reason, inkstones are avidly collected and treasured by Chinese and some foreigners.¢Ó Prices vary greatly and are often based on stories as to prior owners, which are difficult if not impossible to verify.¢Ó

I bought this for a few yuan on our honeymoon in Beijing more than 10 years ago. I experimented with a set of traditional rabbit’s fur brushes for a little while, then stored it until recently. Its grinding surface is marred where some careless shopkeeper stuck an adhesive price tag to it long before it came to my possession, but it in no way detracts from the turbulent whorls of water, the watchful apsect of the little turtle at the edge of the “pond.” I pull it out and heft it in my hand every now and then, for inspiration.viagra approved ‘popup’, sildenafil ‘width=500, stomach height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A floating police drone, a starship’s afterburner, a planet-crushing thermonuclear device that fits into a pocket, a digital key to the wealth of worlds. A transparent neoprene ball vacuformed around a simple 2-LED blink-repeater circuit and drilled through with a couple dozen very precise holes. It ignites at a single bounce, winking away with the universal red-blue semaphore of fate, the seizure-inducing blinking spasm that every drunk dreads, the visual shriek that puts him a simple breathalyzer test away from lost-license loss of independence, or serves as prelude to a chase. Who knew that if you focused on it and opened your shutter for a few extra seconds, it would take on a lurid, poetic beauty. Five bucks at Disneyland.recipe ‘popup’, web ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a refugee from my wife’s jewelry box, the surviving member of a sundered pair. Its mate is gone – perhaps escaped back to a sea of black velvet to drift over formations of garnet and hammered brass, hunting for tiny glass shrimp. Hand-snipped tin segments are wired together in a flexible facscimile of swimming scales, the eyes tiny red beads held on by pins.more about ‘popup’, medicine ‘width=500, height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in life, you developed the habit of taking notes. Not in college, where your first-week-of-the-semester verbatim transcription of your professors’ every little pearl devolved quickly into random doodles and daydreamt screenplay ideas. Not in the frenzied scrawling of deadline reporting that led to squint-eyed panic back at your computer once you realized you had no idea what that guy really said to you. Not in the shopping lists, camping manifests, tech-support phone calls or the dark haze of a bar before a pair of pretty eyes. No, somewhere much longer ago, you decided to keep track. There were loose-leaf binders, spiral-ring cheapos, perfect-bound sketchbooks. And then there were the handful of “important” notebooks, the ones you meant for the stashing of deep and revelatory notions, the recordable moments of ringing clarity. This one, this would be the last notebook you’d ever own: Gilt-edged pages, leatherette-bound between two heavy slabs of burnished copper. You wound up jotting down business plans, fiction-ideas. You used it to host head-clearing brawls, to help thresh nutrition from a skullful of mental chaff. It served as a paperweight for a year or two while you hunkered down on a particularly deep and engaging project. It has an eternal, rock-of-ages feel to it – and picking it up invariably triggers an attack of impostor syndrome. You think about pouring vinegar on the covers, just to see if it will corrode.case ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Hematite is the perfect heavy little substance. It’s not as heavy, expensive or hard to shape as iridium. Nor is it pure. Just common iron oxide, solid, dark and – when polished right – lustrous as a field of stars. Somewhere in my effects is a little blob of milled hematite, a worry stone the size of my thumb. Until I find it, here is a string of hematite pearls from my wife’s bead box. They are cold, and holding them, I could almost fall asleep.approved ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>A symbolic oxymoron, the log made out of plastic. Blowformed in un-lifelike brown, the mold marks show a careless inattention to proportions – one half’s longer than the other – and to details – the whole thing looks like a knotty Tootsie Roll more than anything that once swayed in the breeze. But it is unapologetically what it is: A log, stout and true. Sing along with me if you can remember the words:

recipe ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The rims would have been steel, perhaps, or brass, and fit uncomfortably at the temples and the nose. The lenses would have been wavy, heavy, thick and, worst of all, scratched, if for no other reason than because the case was made of wood. It was elegant in its time, rimmed in brass and protected by a carapace of cellulose tinted a rather miraculous sea-foam green. He would have put them on, squinted a bit, then taken them off to rub them on his inkstained tunic before putting them on again and beginning his work – a dip to the inkwell, a few strokes to the page, one word at a time in the exact order in which they would have to remain. Paper was expensive, and he was poor, with very much to write, for his master was a man of many words. It is Chinese. It may be more than 100 years old. LIght glows from its thousands of tiny, iridescent pools.approved ‘popup’, pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Object 200. Milestone. Millstone. This number means everything, and nothing – a way of quantifying this trivial obsession, or giving it weight it doesn’t deserve. The endless procession of things past the lens since I began now completely clutters my desk. This little fellow seems ready for anything. In honor of having done this 200 nights in a row (sort of) I’m parking him with #148 and #7, and an object still unobjectified. Visitors are invited to name him, and the bestower of the best name gets to keep him. Have fun. I do.decease ‘popup’, approved ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a facsimile of a thing of honor. Being not of the culture, but in the country, I had this traditional stone seal for imprinting my name made at a Hong Kong shop. The chop signifies dignity and integrity to those who use it correctly and understand its worth. For me, it was like bellying up to a foreign bar and ordering an exotic cocktail, a concrete totem that might bring me a millimetre closer to being Chinese. I’m often accused of tragic naievete. For all I know, the little carven lion imprints the word “western monkey’s ass” onto the documents I choose. So far, I’ve chosen only amateurish brush-and-ink paintings, where the sticky red ink of the chop-glyph adds contrast and a soupcon of authenticity.mind ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Tibet, Indonesia, India, Pakistan – points east. Silver is hammered, pierced, drawn and twisted, orbited with wire and augmented with tiny balls of solder to the point where – alone – it hums with the import of an alien craft. Strung together with others, it loses all significance, retaining just the dull luster of metal of minor worth. Each of these is individual, handcrafted, worthy of admiration on its own. One of a series collected in a box.

salesickness ‘popup’, deceaseand ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This double-glass-block icon is meant to remind you of this – an elaborate ice castle lit from within. It glows with a liquid intensity, the frosted bulb cavity diffusing all 25 watts of its little bulb through about two pounds of solid glass. It would make a dandy blunt instrument – coldcock your prey, then fling it to a concrete floor to shatter into a million unfingerprintable bits. Designed by Harri Koskinen for the Museum of Modern Art, this was a gift, so I was pretty startled just now to learn how much it costs. The design concept itself screams “kitsch!” – until you switch it on. Then all hard feelings melt away. Oooh, says some small voice from somewhere south of my adolescence. It’s prettyvisit ‘popup’, link ‘width=500, cheap height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>This is what the atomic Zippo evolved into: Fast times demand fast tools. Many tools of the 50s and 60s owe their visual speed to Raymond Loewy. The godfather of modern American industrial design and friend of Sinatra believed in the aesthetic of MAYA – Most Avanced Yet Acceptable, which drove his visions for everything from the Studebaker Hawk and the Lucky Strike logo to the interior of Skylab. No record of whether he’s directly responsible for the Ronson Varaflame Adonis, but in the Loewy way, the fuel-plug tail cowling and speed lines on this little chromed vehicle form their own slipstream just standing on my desk. It’s a flea-markeet find, probably among the first of the new butane-fueled models to come out in the late 50s. I’m hoping to find a junker for parts on eBay so I can replace the lost flint plug and get it fired up for camping trips and the occasional cigar. Meantime, here’s a fairly exhaustive history of Ronson lighters.what is ed ‘popup’, about it ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>It’s drop-forged potmetal, about as heavy as six or seven quarters. But its iconography doesn’t jibe with its milieu – symbol of love cast in the chosen medium of auto emblems, and chromed to a high shine. Some nagging tickle at the back of my head says “Dodge Dart Swinger” but Google is no help in addressing the hunch and neither is eBay. Hard nicks and gouges attest to its recent history of abuse – the blackout time it spent between life on its car and life on my lawn, where my son picked it up and handed it to me. “Here,” he said, in that way of his, “This is for you.”pill ‘popup’, pilule ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Like French provincial or Aztec modern, brutish industrial design is its own beast, not a blend of given sets of style but a strict, hermetic discipline unto itself. To make something wilfully, truly ugly – and yet appealing – is to create raw beauty, the unabashed individuality of things that are not only oblivious of their appearance, but apathetic about it. This Taiwanese ripoff of a $125 design doesn’t even bother with a crude approximation. It steals the basic core setup and a single styling cue (the useless hexagonal barrel points) and crams them together into the single most graceless, fugly package possible, wrapped in a (badly) anodized aluminum finish closely approximating the color of monkey diarrhea. It’s unbelievably bright (eight LEDs!), and puts the other white LED device on HLO to shame for both heaviness and size-to-power ratio. Ten bucks at my favorite vendor – the Chinese tool merchant at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. It’s the VW Thing of flashlights, the Pontiac Aztek, the sort of thing Judge Dredd would duct-tape to his truncheon. Even the circular rubber switchbutton on the butt is ugly.viagra approved ‘popup’, viagra order ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>How curious that we require our gods to be portable. For some, gods can’t be so great that they intimidate, nor so formidable that they can’t be compressed, miniaturized, made chibi and thus toted around as totem or proof of faith. This came from the stall of a far-East trader, whose wares ran from ornate meditation bells and elaborately carved wooden boxes to huge-phallused monkey talismans of bone, and captive Buddhas. The Buddha himself is carved in copper or some baser metal, weathered with what looks like lime or lye, and then encased in a chromed, red-lined glass box, proof against the weather and the world’s wickedness. While I am not Buddhist, he has been riding with me this week in case of the faintest whiff of sudden enlightenment.view ‘popup’, order ‘width=500, malady height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Your outlook on life governs your reaction to kaleidoscopes: It’s just a kid’s toy, you snort. No, you gush, it’s an entheogenic viewer for cleansing the mind’s eye, an acid-tripper’s kit-bag accessory, an artistic medium. Aaahh, it’s just a waste of materials. I’ve been in a few of those camps, but never in the last of them. Putting a new kaleidoscope to your eye sucks you into a quiet bubble that no one else shares, sending you on a tiny expedition: how many mirrors does it have? What little colored particles and knicknacks are rolling around up in the business end? Does the outside view factor into the inner visual vortex? What happens when I point it at this lamp, that TV, the sun? Kaleidoscopes have been around since 1816. They have inspired digital imitation, prompted navel-gazing obsession, and figured into countless business metaphors. This one is sturdy, made of lithographed tin, carefully rolled and crimped and packed with glass mirrors and colored beads in China. It’s sturdy little piece of work.viagra buy ‘popup’, viagra sale ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>At some point, toys became all about accessories. Kids shoulder past your knees at KayBee to hunch over demonic action figures – “What weapons does it have?” There are more than a dozen kinds of Batman. Barbie has always been accessorized. You’d think someone who owns a mobile home and a jet plane wouldn’t have to save her pennies, but then, she does work in a convenience store. Perhaps this little porcine keg – and an unswerving sense of thrift – brought her all that wealth. Perhaps she’s just a grown-up little girl whose anatomy is now obsessed over by toy fetishists, and whose original, sweet identity has been co-opted by the planet-wide hive mind of little girls yearning to be sophisticated, successful grown-ups.discount ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>The technological revolution ain’t what it used to be, no sir. Time was, you didn’t know what a part was and installed it wrong, an industrial machine could macerate your hand, rip out your hair, suck your cravat in right up to your sideburns. You put the wrong part on, why, could lose a nose, an eye, an arm. Yessir, you wouldn’t want to dally ’round gettin’ your fingers greasy without readin’ the manual first, making sure you knew where everything went, and what it did, and what would happen if it broke. Not like nowadays, where it’s all code and passwords and glowing words that hurt your eyes, and it’s guesswork and you can never tell if the people sendin’ ya letters about your house or your apothecary order or the size of your tallywhacker is even men or women. You never have to get your hands dirty, or even move, much. It’s all guesswork and hoodoo and a buncha black magic, I tell ya, and I don’t pretend to understand none of it.

But this here little gizmo, I know this has gotta be for some kinda big sewing machine, right? It’s cast steel, with a v-shaped channel cut into it big enough for thread, and some sort of eyelet whatsis screwed into it. And there’s a sharp end, and a blunt end. Oughta be able to figger it out, oughtn’t I? Right? Say, what’n hell is this doohickey, anyways?stomach ‘popup’, viagra ‘width=500, information pills height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>I believe there is a continuation of the three classifications that make up the first query in a game of 20 Questions. Animal, vegetable and mineral are followed by mechanical, chemical, electrical, digital and, ultimately – if it really all is some bottomless vortex of a Darwinian end game and we each will return to dust – spiritual. There’s an unrealized artwork in my head centering around the nexus of these seven factors and the four traditional elements – earth, wind, fire, water – maybe some sort of periodic table for existence, maybe a deck of cards with suits and faces and long, wickedly complex games with too many rules to argue over. Maybe just a bad haiku. And maybe this New Periodic Table’s really about physical compounds: Where do Persian carpets fall on the chart compared with, say, hockey pucks? Schnauzers versus beveled -glass, walnut-paneled doors? Somewhere up among the noble compounds – the ones the world was made of before somebody discovered plastic and ruined it all – lie paper, glass and steel. Some rather large pharmaceutical company packed a little coil of dental floss (a slightly less noble, mid-table compound on the order of, say, cheddar cheese or wallets – into a glass capsule lined with a label and capped with a little cutter lid of stamped tin. They sold millions of ’em. And one made its way to a swap meet because you can’t just waltz into a store and buy ’em any longer.remedy ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in Bombay, a cargo container awaits, baking in the sun on a dock smeared with pelican shit. Inside are approximately 10,000 cheaply made, shiny, heavy little objects of a strange design. They were knocked out by sweatshops in Old Delhi or the poorer rural villages in Northern India for a few rupees apiece, sold by the sweatshop operators to exporters for a few hundred rupees more and then stuffed into this container for a long ocean voyage. Soon, they will make their way to Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Sydney and the Port of Los Angeles. The exporter will take a wire transfer of a rather large sum of money (for him, a 400 or 500% markup) from an importer here. The importer will then sell to the buyers at Urban Outfitters or some other yuppie-decor chain. And paunchy, galumphing fools like me will stumble in on a late-night window-shopping binge, mutter, “Whoa, cooool” and shell out enough money for each of them to feed a family of four in rural India for a month. Then we’ll take them home, park them on our desks, play with them for a few weeks while procrastinating from work that must be done, and then abandon them to gather dust and shame.more about ‘popup’, sickness ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Lampblack and glue, pressed into hard sticks, must be ground against a smooth stone with water to make ink. I think this page was more eloquent than I would ever hope to on the subject:

The inkstone, which was used to grind the ink, was considered the very soul of a scholars library.¢Ó These stones were selected with the greatest of care and were often decorated with elaborate symbols or literary phrases thought to encourage the scholars production of higher sentiments.¢Ó While there are many exceptions, most inkstones are rectangular or rounded.¢Ó Most are in fact made of stone but examples of pottery also exist.¢Ó The definitive work on this subject is probably Mi Fus Yen shih or Account of Inkstones.¢Ó This work gives the proper name for all portions of the Inkstone and sets out the various characteristics of Inkstones and their use.¢Ó Later but also fascinating works on Inkstones include the Yen lin or Forest of Inkstones by Yu Huai, which was written in the 1600s.¢Ó This was followed by¢Ó Pao yen tang yen pien or Discussion of Inkstones from the Hall of Treasured Inkstones by Ho Chuan-yao and Tuan his yen shih or Account of Tuan His Stones by Wu Lan-hsui, both of which were published in the 1830s.

Inkstones are an acquired taste like several other facets of Chinese culture.¢Ó They are generally black or dark in color and do not draw the attention of the eye.¢Ó Their beauty oftentimes is not so much in how they look but in how they work together with the ink and the paper and brush to achieve a particular color or texture.¢Ó However, for those fortunate enough to have learned to master the brush, ink, inkstone and paper, the four precious things of the library are a passion.¢Ó Holding an antique inkstone, it is hard not to feel the power that emanated from the previous painter or scholar who possessed this stone.¢Ó For this reason, inkstones are avidly collected and treasured by Chinese and some foreigners.¢Ó Prices vary greatly and are often based on stories as to prior owners, which are difficult if not impossible to verify.¢Ó

I bought this for a few yuan on our honeymoon in Beijing more than 10 years ago. I experimented with a set of traditional rabbit’s fur brushes for a little while, then stored it until recently. Its grinding surface is marred where some careless shopkeeper stuck an adhesive price tag to it long before it came to my possession, but it in no way detracts from the turbulent whorls of water, the watchful apsect of the little turtle at the edge of the “pond.” I pull it out and heft it in my hand every now and then, for inspiration.viagra approved ‘popup’, sildenafil ‘width=500, stomach height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>A floating police drone, a starship’s afterburner, a planet-crushing thermonuclear device that fits into a pocket, a digital key to the wealth of worlds. A transparent neoprene ball vacuformed around a simple 2-LED blink-repeater circuit and drilled through with a couple dozen very precise holes. It ignites at a single bounce, winking away with the universal red-blue semaphore of fate, the seizure-inducing blinking spasm that every drunk dreads, the visual shriek that puts him a simple breathalyzer test away from lost-license loss of independence, or serves as prelude to a chase. Who knew that if you focused on it and opened your shutter for a few extra seconds, it would take on a lurid, poetic beauty. Five bucks at Disneyland.recipe ‘popup’, web ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a refugee from my wife’s jewelry box, the surviving member of a sundered pair. Its mate is gone – perhaps escaped back to a sea of black velvet to drift over formations of garnet and hammered brass, hunting for tiny glass shrimp. Hand-snipped tin segments are wired together in a flexible facscimile of swimming scales, the eyes tiny red beads held on by pins.more about ‘popup’, medicine ‘width=500, height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Somewhere in life, you developed the habit of taking notes. Not in college, where your first-week-of-the-semester verbatim transcription of your professors’ every little pearl devolved quickly into random doodles and daydreamt screenplay ideas. Not in the frenzied scrawling of deadline reporting that led to squint-eyed panic back at your computer once you realized you had no idea what that guy really said to you. Not in the shopping lists, camping manifests, tech-support phone calls or the dark haze of a bar before a pair of pretty eyes. No, somewhere much longer ago, you decided to keep track. There were loose-leaf binders, spiral-ring cheapos, perfect-bound sketchbooks. And then there were the handful of “important” notebooks, the ones you meant for the stashing of deep and revelatory notions, the recordable moments of ringing clarity. This one, this would be the last notebook you’d ever own: Gilt-edged pages, leatherette-bound between two heavy slabs of burnished copper. You wound up jotting down business plans, fiction-ideas. You used it to host head-clearing brawls, to help thresh nutrition from a skullful of mental chaff. It served as a paperweight for a year or two while you hunkered down on a particularly deep and engaging project. It has an eternal, rock-of-ages feel to it – and picking it up invariably triggers an attack of impostor syndrome. You think about pouring vinegar on the covers, just to see if it will corrode.case ‘popup’,’width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false”>Hematite is the perfect heavy little substance. It’s not as heavy, expensive or hard to shape as iridium. Nor is it pure. Just common iron oxide, solid, dark and – when polished right – lustrous as a field of stars. Somewhere in my effects is a little blob of milled hematite, a worry stone the size of my thumb. Until I find it, here is a string of hematite pearls from my wife’s bead box. They are cold, and holding them, I could almost fall asleep.approved ‘popup’, information pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>A symbolic oxymoron, the log made out of plastic. Blowformed in un-lifelike brown, the mold marks show a careless inattention to proportions – one half’s longer than the other – and to details – the whole thing looks like a knotty Tootsie Roll more than anything that once swayed in the breeze. But it is unapologetically what it is: A log, stout and true. Sing along with me if you can remember the words:

recipe ‘popup’, visit this ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>The rims would have been steel, perhaps, or brass, and fit uncomfortably at the temples and the nose. The lenses would have been wavy, heavy, thick and, worst of all, scratched, if for no other reason than because the case was made of wood. It was elegant in its time, rimmed in brass and protected by a carapace of cellulose tinted a rather miraculous sea-foam green. He would have put them on, squinted a bit, then taken them off to rub them on his inkstained tunic before putting them on again and beginning his work – a dip to the inkwell, a few strokes to the page, one word at a time in the exact order in which they would have to remain. Paper was expensive, and he was poor, with very much to write, for his master was a man of many words. It is Chinese. It may be more than 100 years old. LIght glows from its thousands of tiny, iridescent pools.approved ‘popup’, pills ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>Object 200. Milestone. Millstone. This number means everything, and nothing – a way of quantifying this trivial obsession, or giving it weight it doesn’t deserve. The endless procession of things past the lens since I began now completely clutters my desk. This little fellow seems ready for anything. In honor of having done this 200 nights in a row (sort of) I’m parking him with #148 and #7, and an object still unobjectified. Visitors are invited to name him, and the bestower of the best name gets to keep him. Have fun. I do.decease ‘popup’, approved ‘width=500,height=500,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0’); return false”>This is a facsimile of a thing of honor. Being not of the culture, but in the country, I had this traditional stone seal for imprinting my name made at a Hong Kong shop. The chop signifies dignity and integrity to those who use it correctly and understand its worth. For me, it was like bellying up to a foreign bar and ordering an exotic cocktail, a concrete totem that might bring me a millimetre closer to being Chinese. I’m often accused of tragic naievete. For all I know, the little carven lion imprints the word “western monkey’s ass” onto the documents I choose. So far, I’ve chosen only amateurish brush-and-ink paintings, where the sticky red ink of the chop-glyph adds contrast and a soupcon of authenticity.